


Leverage

by Lue4028



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Angst and Feels, Anorexic Sherlock, Asexual Sherlock Holmes/Heterosexual John Watson, Blankets, Case Fic, Character Study, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Cuddling, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dom/sub Undertones, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Drama, Drama & Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional illiteracy, Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hero Worship, Holding Sherlock down against his will, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Husbands, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, In Character, Irene is hella scary, Jealous John, Jealousy, Loss of Virginity, Love Confessions, Love Triangles, M/M, Manipulation, Marriage, Misunderstandings, Moral Ambiguity, Non-Consensual, Non-Consensual Touching, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Obsessive Sherlock, Pining, Pining Idiots, Platonic Romance, Possessive Behavior, Possessive John Watson, Possessive Sherlock, Power Play, Predator/Prey, Protective John, Psychological Drama, Psychological Warfare, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Friendship, Same-Sex Marriage, Sherlock in Denial, Tension, Trauma, Virgin Sherlock, botched confesssions, impossible love triangles, not ooc, unrequited feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2019-05-04 09:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 33,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14590026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lue4028/pseuds/Lue4028
Summary: The low eye contact, aversion to touch, erratic behavior— It’s impossible for him to ignore that Sherlock’s exhibiting textbook signs of trauma.While John was sleeping soundly last night, assuming Sherlock was being “normal” and getting laid, had he actually been—Trigger warning: Rape/non-conThis is an angsty hurt/comfort fic in which Sherlock is assaulted by a serial rapist. This is Johnlock or if you prefer, John & Sherlock, for non-shippers. Previously titled the woman.





	1. Gambit

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments and kudos for your writer, and don't forget to subscribe!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First three chapters are prologue and may be skipped if you prefer to get straight to the point fyi

"It's going to eat it."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is," Sherlock insists. Watching John's expression is almost better than watching the television itself. Sherlock can practically piece together what's playing on the screen from just his face alone. John looks at him like he's wondering why Sherlock is enjoying this and not horrified.

They're watching the life cycle of the black widow on the nature channel, which involves the little-known practice of sexual cannibalism, wherein the female of the species eats the male following copulation as a sign of undying affection. The female has taken the male and is in the process of tearing off its head. Such betrayal is, naturally, the source of John's horror.

Sherlock's phone chimes and he looks down at the screen, relaying a text from Lestrade with details of the latest body to drop. Sherlock gets up to retrieve his coat from the hanger, tossing it over his shoulders.

"We're going to Camden," he informs John, doubling his scarf around his collar.

"What, now?" John asks, seeing that it's well past midnight and there's a small hurricane happening outside, slapping trees against window panes and the like, your usual saturnine weather.

"Yes, now. There's been another," he says with his usual curtness, dialing Lestrade to tell them they're en route.

"You should at least wear a raincoat or something-" John hazards, although on second thought, he's never ventured into such sacrilegious territory before.

At Sherlock's look of condescension he tries "Umbrella?" but the suggestion is met with equal disdain, as though John has scandalously asked him to convert to Satanism. John lets it drop, acknowledging that in this particular bout of tug-of-war, it is inevitable that pragmatism take a backseat to fashion- and the ongoing boycott on Mycroft-themed merchandise.

Without further warning, Sherlock throws open the door and canters down the stairs, fully expecting John to simply follow him into the downpour. John sighs and grabs his green trench, following after his eccentric flatmate.

 

 

"So what is this bloke, some sort of... gay serial rapist-?" Anderson asks as they tread over to the crime scene barrier. It's raining so hard it's caused some mudslides on the park grounds and the darkness does little to improve visibility.

"Seven bodies in just three days. Freak's got to be jumping for joy right about now," Sally says, holding a flashlight and trying not to get any of the crime scene nastiness on her new, hard-earned boots. What meets their eyes is not exactly a pretty sight, where multiple lacerations to the body have made for a grizzly, if not decorative display of human fluids.

"He's not a freak," John bites in, not that anyone is convinced. While the rest of them still linger behind the caution tape, Sherlock has wasted no time in familiarizing himself with the scene, trudging forth in the darkness through the soggy, saturated grass to where the area has been cordoned off. He watches Sherlock combing over the crime scene while the rest of the police stand by like vestigial appendages.

He's certainly not jumping for joy. In fact, when he steps back, finally satisfied with his assessment, his jaw is set in a grave line, his coat billowing in the ragged wind.

"Come on, what was he doing when you left? He was up to no good am I right?" Sally tsks. John doesn't really know how to respond to that. Teaching him about the vices of spider sex probably classifies as not good.

"Honestly Watson, how do you even live with the guy?" Anderson shakes his head.

"I swear he's getting off on this," Donovan says, watching him efficiently navigate the place like a bloodhound, brain operating in high-gear and eyes alight with rapid-fire thought.

Anderson snorts. "Fancy he's the one who did this? We know he's got a thing for Watson here. Maybe he finally decided to step out of the closet," he jeers, throwing his light and taking stock of the God-awful mess. When his halo of light finds John, the expression on his face is not quite so comical.

"It was just a joke," Anderson says in his defense. Needless to say, crime scene humor often is in poor taste.

Undoing his gloves, Sherlock stalks back over to the yellow tape where Lestrade is barking orders, the bottom edges of his clothes stained with red-tinged mystery liquids. John plods over to convene with them, in part avoid the unsettling locker-room talk, which is, getting worse by the minute. "You know that song it's raining men-?" Anderson asks with a smirk. "Oh God- now you're just being morbid," Sally grimaces.

 

"So what are we looking for?" Lestrade asks as John joins them, preparing to jot down Sherlock's findings on the police report.

Despite Lestrade's eagerness for a break in the case, Sherlock doesn't respond at first, distracted and preoccupied with thoughts of his own, so Lestrade prompts him.

"He's homosexual, I'm guessing-?" the inspector hazards.

When Sherlock finally does say something, it's "The ratio of the second and forth fingers on the strangle marks- it's off," which seems to make little sense to anyone other than himself.

Assuming he might be able to translate, Lestrade angles at John, who shoots him a look that means don't look at me.

"It's not a man," Sherlock tells their confused faces, decidedly less verbose than usual. Right about now is typically when he'd be showing off.

"What does that mean? You're saying we're looking for a woman?" Lestrade takes a step back and points to the cadaver, or what's left of it anyway. "You're saying a woman did this," he repeats in contention, his eyebrows rising up past his hairline incredulously.

Sherlock remains uncharacteristically silent.

"No. No way," Lestrade immediately rejects the idea, gesturing to the state of the body, "I mean just look at this, John! There's no way a woman could have done this- not without a gun or an accomplice or drugs, am I right?" he doesn't wait for John to confirm but John is somewhat inclined to agree. John's eyes travel over the mangled heap of remains, seeing multiple contusions, fractures, lacerations from a monstrous use of force, and body parts that, even with his expertise, are simply mangled beyond recognition. Between a man, a woman, and a saber-tooth tiger, he's betting it's the tiger, and probably one with a vendetta against humans.

"All their blood work is coming back clean. Get us something else to work with," Lestrade demands, and plods off toward forensics to give them the go.

"He seems tense," John remarks.

"Naturally. It's the seventh victim in a row," Sherlock says, and John has to wonder where this newfound sensitivity is coming from. He actually appears to be rather sore about this case come to think of it-- the way he often looks when John has tragically disappointed him by separating the eyeballs from the pickle jar in the refrigerator or buying salt that isn't laboratory grade. He would've thought the detective would be thrilled for what was shaping up to be either a 9 or a 10 in the midst of what has been a monotony of two and a half's, but he doesn't comment. After all, he's not the fanatic of the two of them, he likes to think.

He and Sherlock plod back toward the body, which is a bit graphic, even for John's well-seasoned standards. While it's not something he's ever done dating all the way back to dissection class in med school, John is forced to cover his mouth and nose when the thick scent threatens to make him gag. He honestly can't tell if it's a sex crime, homicide, or bear mauling.

"Did you find something?" John asks when Sherlock draws out a scalpel he swiped from the ME office and kneels down to make an incision, exchanging his leather gloves with latex.

"There's signature sewn into the back of the victim's shoulder," he says.

"How you can even see anything in the mess is a marvel," John says, lighting the area with his Nokia while Sherlock extricates the patch. He holds it up to the light for John to read.  
  
"What does that say? O.S.?"

Sherlock issues a sigh. Although he's normally so fastidious about his appearance, he's allowed the ruddy rainwater is to seep into his clothes where he's crouched, giving him the awry appearance of the serial killer Sally and Anderson make him out to be. He looks like a parched vampire that got into a blood bank. "This is what I was worried about. This is the modus operandi of one of our worst home-grown serial killers. A Jack the ripper of the 20th century."

"That's good right? That means you know who did it?"

"No," he says heavily, "This wasn't him." He rises to his feet with a heavy weight on his shoulders and places the square of skin in a biohazard bag.

"A copy cat?"

"Something like that. Except for one marked difference," he says, presiding over the body with an air of pensiveness. John presumes he means the gender of the victims, which is admittedly unusual. Even though in some circumstances it had been difficult to tell, forensics confirmed all the bodies had, indeed, been male.

Something catches Sherlock's eye and he crouches down to retrieve it. "What've you got there?" John asks when Sherlock leans down to take a swab of the man's lower lip (what's left of it). "Blood?"

Much to John's alarm, Sherlock touches the sample to his tongue. They haven't yet ID'ed the body and have no idea of the victim's medical history- he sees the endless list of life-threatening pathogens Sherlock's just exposed himself to fly before his eyes.

"Lipstick," Sherlock informs him, and John's annoyance takes a backseat to surprise.

Rather than relief, John feels something eerie run through him.

"I was hoping I'd never see the day when victims started retaliating," Sherlock says as an afterthought.

John stiffens, puzzled by the comment.

"You think this is revenge?" he asks, dubious, "None of these men were in the system for assault." Or anything, actually. The ones they'd been able to identify were all squeaky clean- mostly business men and white collars, not unusual with this being London.

Sherlock laughs dryly at that. "Not revenge," he says, acknowledging that this goes well past that, snapping off his forensics gloves. "This is war."

 

 

 

 

 

After flipping through series of gory case files, one after another, Sherlock abandons the stack of paper on the desk and recedes introspectively into himself. The rain has receded into a misty drizzle and traffic is in a midsummer morning lull. He notices a familiar license plate that's trucking back to Greater London at its usual time of day, followed by an industrial district worker going to take the tube to their noisy flat that affords them no sleep, followed by a motorcyclist who's not looking forward to having a conversation with his boyfriend about how he might have run over their cat.

“The indiscriminate manner in which this serial killer operates is unlike anything I have ever seen,” he mumbles pensively through his fingers, “Jumping from city to city, across nations, like they are trying to outrun something... Or chase something."

The door bell rings.

“Are you going to get that?” John asks Sherlock, who is gazing out the window. John is otherwise preoccupied at the moment, struggling to get their power back online not because of the storm, no, but because someone’s corrosives inexplicably made their way into the circuit breaker, which has since gone haywire.   
  
John glances hopefully at Sherlock and sees he’s still not paying attention, staring dazedly into thin air. He sighs and towels his sooty hands off, going to the check the door.

  
When he opens it, there’s a man collapsed on the doorstep, heaving for breath.

“Sir, are you alright?” John asks, kneeling down to take his pulse. He appears to be a few years past middle-aged with whitening hair, but otherwise in seemingly healthy condition.

“Does Sherlock Holmes live here?” he rasps, unable to catch his breath, “Please, I need to speak to him-“

John struggles to offer some alternative explanation to "Um, he is otherwise occupied?" but Sherlock has since ventured down to the first floor and joins them, his voice sounding from behind John. “You can stand up now, John. I wouldn’t waste your medical attentions on him,” he says casually, leaning against the wall.

John looks up at him questioningly. “You’re looking at the man responsible for the brutal murders of twenty nine individuals, still unaccounted for, between the years 1974 and 79. You know, the one I told you about.”

John is taken aback, seeing that this seemingly harmless, elderly man on his knees is actually one of London’s most wanted. Even so, he’s disinclined to rescind his assistance and leave the suffering man to his fate-- technically, his profession requires that he abstain from making character judgments.

“Mr. Holmes you have to help me,” he says gripping John’s arm. “I'll tell you where the bodies are- all of them.”

“We know where all the bodies are, Oscar. You’ve left them out all over the streets in plain sight. What happened, did you get tired of women?” Sherlock asks, crossing his arms, pointedly not affected by the man's plight.

“No, you don’t understand. I didn’t kill those people Mr. Holmes-” he calls after him as Sherlock turns away, presumably to return to his study. He stops, but still doesn’t turn around.

“Then who did?" he says, "No one else I know has a penchant for signing their name into the back of people's necks after snapping them.”

“I want you to take me in for all that, like you tried to do before- remember? I’ll give you whatever you need, please just take me in,” the elder pleads.

“Unfortunately, there’s very little I can do to help you with that. The law was on your side, as you may recall. If you wanted to get locked up perhaps you shouldn’t have killed all your victims before they had the chance to mention anything of import?” he suggests, doing very little to contain his thinly veiled hatred for the man.

He can see why Sherlock doesn't like him for the crime though. He would have a hard time believing the man was up to no good again- age has weakened him considerably.

Sherlock reaches for the door, but the man objects. "No, Mr. Holmes, you have to listen to me- Everywhere I go- people just drop dead," he pleads.

"That's a very convenient story. Do they just fall out of the sky, dead?" he asks, trying to infuse the comment with as much disinterest as possible.

"You don't understand- Someone is doing this to me!" Sherlock pays him no heed.

"Leave him, John," he says softly. John stands back, feeling very uncomfortable watching the mounting panic in the man's eyes as the door closes on him, serial killer or not.

 

"What was that about?" John asks, turning to him.

"Midlife crisis, I imagine," Sherlock shrugs innocently, licking his fingertips and carding through his loose-leaf case files again. Yes, he'd brought them downstairs with him.

"He was a cold case I cracked," he feels obliged to explain when John looks skeptical. "Well, almost cracked. We tried to lock him up but there were issues with the evidence. It had a tendency to disappear."

"Is he better at covering his tracks than you are at uncovering them?"

"It was consequence of the times- the 70's and 80's saw a great deal of botched police work," he explains, then throws the files aside, irked, "Still, I should have gotten him. I missed something. There was some missing link- a smoking gun, I just could never find."

John frowns. Sounds like a case of too little too late that couldn't be helped. It makes sense then why he was not overjoyed about he case- he feels this is all happening again because he couldn't solve it in the first place.

  
"Not one of my proudest moments," he admits with a wry smile, "Now it's coming back to haunt me."

 

It doesn't take Oscar Sorace long to resurface, although when they encounter him next a mere 24 hours later, he is not in so lively a state. He had died at the precinct in the waiting area, but not purportedly due to unnatural causes, which had been suspected given the odd timing of his demise. Having tended to many of the homicides of his glory days, NSY was a odd, if not ironic place, for a man of his crimes to turn to in his hour of need. Perhaps his past had caught up with him. They are called in due to the suspicious circumstances and tasked with determining the cause of death.

"Look, the lovers are back," Sally greets them cheerfully, looking up from her paperwork as they walk in. _When did they start calling us_ that? John wonders, giving Sherlock a sidelong glance. Sherlock makes no move to refute her, instead electing to fight fire with fire.

"Unfortunate _your_ illicit lover dumped you last night, Sally," Sherlock offers his condolences, puncturing the inflated ballon that was her ego. John is semi-uncomfortable with the unspoken implication that has yet to be negated, seeing that his retort was more of a confirmation than a denial. "But then again, he was something of a prat."

Anderson twitches with annoyance. Satisfied with the ensuing, cricket-laden silence, Sherlock journeys over the the body to conduct his investigation.

"Say, John, you don't actually like this guy, do you?" Anderson asks John suspiciously, arms crossed. John rolls his eyes, aghast. Not this again. "I'm not a homophobe, really. It's just- him? Really?"

"Here's an idea. Why don't you go do your job, and I'll do mine?" John smiles with the patience of a saint, giving Anderson his blessing to get on with his forensic analysis or whatever he supposedly does and leave them be.

Anderson plucks out a business card from his pocket after giving him a wary look and hands it to him. "For when the bodies start showing up in your flat. You call me," he tells him in all seriousness, making sure he's been understood before striding off. John is too miffed for words.

Sherlock looks the deceased over for any indication of poisoning or foul play. When his scouring search turns up none so much as a pin prick, he leans back on his heels in resignation. He stands up over the eighth body they've encountered in not even so many as days on the case, looking conflicted. John himself is conflicted too, and when the tox screen reveals he had died of myocardial infarction his feelings are confirmed that this was something he could have prevented.

"It was unprofessional," John says looking at the ME's report, "I should have done something."

"Don't," Sherlock tells him, when he so much as suspects John might be blaming himself, "This one's on me."

Just then Irene Adler runs into them after having just given the detective inspector her regards, which is not odd at all. Apparently she'd been 'in the neighborhood' and had decided to 'pop by', which Anderson nods at like a dunce. Sally seems to regard the woman with a vague disinterest, sizing her up to be altogether harmless and not finding anything Irene does important enough to worthy suspicion.

"Oh dear, what's happened?" Irene asks, taking off her sunglasses. Somehow John had been rather hoping they'd seen the last of her. For some reason, he finds he's developed an even greater dislike of the woman than before and feels vaguely threatened by her presence, although he can't really explain why.

"Cardiac arrest," Anderson supplies. Sherlock raises an eyebrow at the look of surprise on her face.

"Poor devil," she laments, perching her teeth on the ear rest of her glasses. "You know, I've never been very good with dead bodies so I'll leave you to it."

"Happy Christmas," she chimes with a wink, addressing Sherlock. It's by far nothing like Christmas unless you're in Australia, but it's become common knowledge Sherlock tends to associate dead bodies with presents and Christmas and frolicking elves. What's odd is the way she says it, like she personally wrapped this gift for him.

Anderson is visibly infatuated with the woman, which John finds annoying until he wonders why he too isn't infatuated. It's not as though she's not attractive by his standards- or really anyone's with eyes.

And Sherlock... he exchanges a look with her, everything spreading out in slow motion as she walks out the revolving door, putting her glasses back on. John looks between them. He doesn't know what that was but he knows he didn't like it.

 

 

 

 _Dinner?_ Sherlock's phone chimes as they're are walking back from the station. He stops, his thumbs hovering over the keyboard on his mobile.

By the time they get back to the flat, he still hasn't typed a word. For ten, twenty minutes he stares at the screen, not knowing what to write. John raises an eyebrow at his apparent fixation with the screen and asks him if he's alright, at which point Sherlock seems to finally realize he exists.

"John what would you say if a woman asked you out?" he asks urgently.

"I don't know, yes?" John offers in confusion, feeling a little overwhelmed by his intensity. And just like that, his writer's block is lifted.

_Yes._


	2. Poison Pawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is being stupid. Meanwhile, John is trying to replace him with tea.

 

John jogs up the stairs. Upon looking up from the mail he's grabbed from the foyer (which he fears contains an overdue TV bill), John catches Sherlock Holmes at the base of the steps coming down from John's bedroom, his hand sliding down the banister. John says Sherlock Holmes, because the one word _Sherlock_ doesn't seem enough. His rapid shuffling in search of the rogue letter comes to a slow stop and he forgets completely about the post. 

"Sherlock.. You look..."

"I know," he says.

John swallows and checks whatever ridiculous expression he must be wearing on his face. He knows. Of course he knows. He'd always suspected Sherlock dressed himself with the intention of one-uping everyone in the room, but now he's not so sure. Compared to the sight of him now, its almost as if he hadn't really been trying.

"That is the point of a date. Might as well look the part," he remarks, pinning in his cuff-links.

The point of a... what? Come again? John wonders vaguely if this is some bizarre dream. "Where are you going?" he asks irrationally after him. Seeing him walk off like that does things to him he would never admit to. He's wearing a cologne that wafts around him, sweeping over John like a wave as he walks by.

"On a date," Sherlock repeats smoothly, like it's nothing out of the ordinary, "With the woman. I'll be back late." He dips past John into the living room to collect his blazer from the coat stand, draping it over his arm.

John stands frozen on the steps, letting that sink in. Sherlock is forgoing hunting down an at-large serial killer in favor of a date, with the woman. John grinds his molars together, watching him glide in and out the flat in fluid motions, sleek trousers and polished shoes. He doesn't know what to think about that, averting his eyes with mixed feelings. Of course, he's happy for him. It's good to see Sherlock with some zeal in his eyes for something other than a case for once, but did it have to be for her?

He supposes it makes sense. He'd always had an interest in her, hadn't he? He'd just never acted on it.

John can't say he actually disapproves of his taste- he'd just never liked her, for whatever reason. He could say it was because she had been in league with Moriarty, or because she had double crossed him a number of times, but the truth is he could never really pin down why she bothered him.

"So long as that's allowed?" Sherlock enquires amusedly at John's off-beat reaction. It occurs to John he's letting on his reservations, his face dark and brooding.

"Of course," John stammers, flustered not only at the implication, but the way he says it, his voice like a purring car engine. John quirks a self-stabbing smile, "Why wouldn't it be?"

Unable to detect the hollowness of his words, Sherlock appears satisfied with that. "Is it alright if I borrow your tie?" he asks, holding the silk band in hand. John glowers pointedly at the thing in disapproval- it's very showy, garnished with a sun-shaped pendant- a medal for valor. _It would be alright if it didn't make you look so damn sinful_ , he thinks. He shoves the voice of protest to the back of his mind, willing it to behave itself.

"You don't wear ties," he objects before he can stop to wonder why he's arguing about this. John doesn't like to think he's jealous. Why should he be? Sherlock was his friend. Admittedly, he was a touch over-fond of him, but he didn't see any reason why he should feel possessive about him dating someone else. Yet there it was, an eerie flutter of disquiet in his chest at the idea.

He dismisses the refractory thought, trying with what power he has to ignore it. Spending so much time with the detective was making him stake too much on their friendship. He really needed to get out more on a date or two himself.

"Which is why I apparently don't have any of my own." and why he had to journey up to John's room to get one, it seems.

"Alright," John gives, trying to repress the edge in his voice. It was a bit much to fret over his friend's romantic interests like this, and maybe even a tad pathetic. If John was gay that would be one thing, but he was just a lonely, straight forty-three year old who was in dire need of a life.

"Would you?" Sherlock says, handing the tie and pendant to him. _No. Hell no_ , the voice says, but John snuffs it out and behaves. He takes the infernal thing from Sherlock and tugs him by the lapel so that he's only a step above him on the stairs.

_There's something about you that's at odds with a full tux, isn't there?_ he thinks as he closes the collar over his neck, which he's left open at the top two buttons, per usual. His improper nature rebels against the rules and restrictions of a full suit. He puts the medal around his neck, then does the silk bowtie over it.

_Stop_ , the sullen, irked voice in John's head protests, _Don't bloody gift-wrap him for her. He doesn't need to look any more handsome, not to impress someone who's going to sleep with him anyway_ _(unless she struck out twice and is equal parts blind and deaf!_ ).

John cards a hand through the hair cascading over the side of his face to perfect his appearance. _Stop it._

Sherlock beams at him and John's heart freezes. When Sherlock steps back, John is suddenly hit by the full picture of him, standing across from him on the step. They exchange looks, standing motionless in the stairwell, John's hands holding the undersides of his wrists. They've gotten to the point now where these moments kind of just happen and they let them happen, then dismiss them as normal. Sherlock wordlessly steps away and shifts past him for the door, leaving John ill at ease when he goes.

"Sherlock wait-" he starts from the top of the stairs. Sherlock pauses in the doorframe and looks up.

"What?"

When John does not answer, his lips curve upward with mischief. He smirks and asks, tilting his head as if genuinely curious, "Am I seducing you too?" which if there was any question, is his intention, clearly.

John scowls, bewildered at how he can get away with jokes like that (of course, it's partly because he lets him). He crosses his arms, now completely convinced the vital organ beating in his chest has been robbed on purpose and the dastardly bandit is just standing there, red-handed yet unwitting. He scintillates on the threshold, his bloody waistcoat open at the chest and gleaming silver where the sunlight hits it around his waist, cinched against the small of his back. He's far too cheeky to be allowed. There has got to be some legal provision against it somewhere, just like there are speed limits and box junctions.

Sherlock frowns under his unrelenting stare, possibly reading his thoughts. John wants to tell him something but he hasn't any idea what he means to say. Don't go on a date with her? How about we do a mold experiment instead or stare at ashes under a microscope? And while you're at it, how about you swear off women entirely and go back to your asexual ways where you whittle away the hours plucking strings on your violin or destroying power lines with hydrochloric acid?

"She won't suspect anything will she?" he says, concerned.

"Suspect what?" John blinks, at which Sherlock grins fiendishly, apparently pleased by the comment, and goes on his merry way.

"Sherlock -" John almost reaches for him to pull him back by the sleeve, but he stops himself in the midst of it. It's completely irrational- what is he doing?

Sherlock looks a little puzzled at the gesture, but then brushes it off with a harmless "Afterward, John. I'll be all yours."

For what it's worth, John greatly disapproves of how he's taken to mock flirting as a source of amusement. John's mouth goes through a couple iterations of opening and closing, unable to find a proper comeback for that. Sherlock gives him a parting smile smugger than a marshmallow on chocolate and closes the door behind him, after which John casts the mail aside and retreats to the sofa to nurse the strange discomfort that's taken lodge in his chest.

 

 

 

Sherlock grins as he saunters into the restaurant on the Strand where he and the woman are meant to rendezvous, thinking that with any luck, he'll have his serial killer by close of business day today. He takes his seat at the table reserved for them near a panoramic window showcasing the Thames, and waits to see if his killer will show. It's a shame he couldn't bring John along for it, (but from what he understands, dates are intended for two people and not three).

Of course, he couldn't be sure whether the illusion of a date would be enough to draw her out. There was a distinct possibility she was already in the wind, on a flight to some unbeknownst continent with a shot of port in hand.  
  
"And here I thought I'd never see the day you actually said yes," her sultry voice sounds from behind him, interrupting his thoughts. She sits down across from him with not an ounce of suspicion or concern. "I had half a mind you wouldn't show," she admits, looking pleasantly surprised to see him.

That should be his line. He was half expecting _she_ wouldn't show. With the recent developments in the case, she had to know he'd be looking for her, thus making his motives suspect. She had a propensity for reading through him that was unmatched- yet somehow she didn't see past his odd timing for suddenly taking her up on her offer for dinner? Not that he was going to complain.

"Are you going to eat anything?" she asks, when he dismisses the waiter's pestering suggestions.

"I don't eat while I'm on a case," he smirks, handing her her own case file.

"What's this?" she asks, flipping through the series of crime scene reports and photographs, which detail nothing short of a bloody massacre.

"I wanted to see your reaction," he says, his fingers feathered together in front of him, looking poised or devious or diabolical or all of the above, he fancies.

"Does this normally work on all the girls?" she asks, arching an eyebrow. Sherlock doesn't say anything, silently brimming with contentment, as if bemused by some inside joke.

"What?" she gives at his ominous, very-pleased-with-himself smile. His finger rims around the edge of his wine glass, which his restless mind has repurposed to cater his fidgeting habits rather than its conventional use as an aid to sip brain-slowing concoctions.

"A normal person would have been at least momentarily shocked or horrified," he points out to her.

"I guess that makes us both not normal," she says, discarding the file and its contents onto the tablecloth between them.

"And here I was under the impression you didn't like dead bodies," he can't help but taunting. It comes to his attention what space there is between them is quickly disappearing. She's leaned forward so much so they are only a breath apart, though Sherlock makes no motion forward or away.

"Photos of the men Oscar Sorace supposedly raped and murdered," he interrupts when the intense eye contact starts to deter from the point of the meeting. He twists the file back to her and turns to a particular image where the killer's signature is visible, though she's pointedly looking not at the file but at him, "He sews his name into their necks, a detail that was never released to the press, so it had to be him as opposed to a copy cat, so the Yard reasons," he's saying, his voice growing quieter as she grows closer.

Her eyes rove over him unapologetically as if she could undress him with a look. They not-very-subtly come to rest on his mouth.

"There is also the small matter of everywhere he went, bodies started dropping," he says, staying on track, "As you know, he died last Sunday. Heart attack. Then the bodies stopped dropping."

The way she usurps space until he's positively trapped with no where else to turn- admittedly, it's a little... overwhelming. Her body language is more forceful than words, domineering and possessive. Every outlandish, overbearing gesture of hers lays claim to him, seeming to mark invisible lines of ownership and possession onto his skin.

"It all seems rather... self explanatory," she reasons, her hand forcing his still where it was distractedly playing at the stem of his glass. He glances at where her hand has arrested his, then returns his attention to her, their lips under the constant threat of touching. He evades her advances and struggles to get back on topic.

"That is assuming you buy the idea he underwent a midlife change in sexual orientation," he says, his hand leaving hers. He looks away, turning the file back to the colder cases with the scores of women Oscar slaughtered.

She places a hand under his jaw and directs his face back to her. His jaw slackens at the overpowering extent at which her eyes burn at him, fierce, envious. He returns the look with confusion, a touch taken off guard and not certain what she's after.

Her thumb strays onto his lower lip and his breath catches. Hardly able to comprehend her complete disregard for boundaries, he bows his head and recoils from the touch. He releases an embarrassed scoff, almost disbelieving of her gall.

"You seem to have taken a keen interest in his death, given that he's a rapist," she says in response to his history lesson. Sherlock's eyes flit up again, then lower to the closeness of her mouth, lined with the classic shade of her lipstick. The color is a match to what he found on the victim, but the chemical composition? He would need a sample to test- She kisses him, catching him off guard. The force of it pushes him backward, making him release a noise of surprise. He freezes, his back rigid against the wall. Then he gives in to that ever-present desire to prove himself right and lets his eyes fall shut.

 

 

 

John schools his features and tries not to think about the wormy, unsettling feeling in his stomach that technically shouldn't be there whenever Sherlock so much as mentions 'the woman'.

He sets about making tea as an excuse to occupy his hands, not that he wants any. He nearly pours two mugs out of habit before stopping himself. He's put an excessive amount of honey in one and it irks him. He turns off the stove and plants both hands on the counter. Tea is usually his cure-all for even the most hardfast of problems, but here it's done him no favors.

The room smells like dust in the air, and lumber in the hearth, and the fine notes of Sherlock's cologne. The warm glow of incandescent lamps chase out the clingings of autumn nightfall.

He absentmindedly goes about doing the dishes, pointedly avoiding the sight of Sherlock's silent violin sitting in its satin-lined case, untouched, or the empty coat rack that just looks wrong, or his unmanned microscope sitting on the countertop, mocking him.

The silence is grating- even so the television repels him. He turns it on anyway. He tries some crap soap channel as a distraction but it fails to keep his thoughts from roaming, until it breaches the ever-pervasive topic of how person A cheated on person B with person C, at which point he clicks it off. The worn floorboards creak as he pads around, reaching for a medical journal that affords him little distraction. He ends up glowering at the blank television screen, rubbing his temple.

John is used to being frequently cast aside in Sherlock's dogged pursuit of whatever criminal catches his fancy. Sometimes, however, he catches himself feeling sore about it, which is just as confusing as it is annoying. Somehow the fact that it's not a case but Irene this time makes it that much worse, making him feel claustrophobic to the point it's asphyxiating.

His eyes veer to the clock. Of course he's not back. Why would he be?

When his thoughts start to wander to what they might be doing that very moment, he throws aside the journal he'd coerced himself into reading with more force than is due and stands at attention. His fingers ache. He clenches and unclenches his fists. He hasn't the faintest idea what he was reading.

 

 

 

 

Sherlock catalogues the composition of waxes and oils, viscosity, durability, tendency to smear. Beset with a million other sensations, finally he detects the toxic, sweet taste of lead beneath the tart deluge of wine. When he parts from her, he's met with a set of eyes of unknowable depths, fueled by all forms of twisted passion, and knows for sure she's the one.

"He is," he acknowledges, running his fingers over the red stain she's left on his bottom lip, and then looks up in dark triumph, "and so are you."

"You left your lipstick at the crime scene," he informs her, revealing the smear of pigment on his fingers. "You appropriated his MO and killed 7 men, that is, within the borough of London, outside the numbers escalate. Your intent was to psychologically derail, torture, and literally scare the man to death by leaving bodies everywhere he went-- which to your credit, might have actually worked..." he says, vaguely impressed, "Your motives for this are less clear. But I imagine your intent was to exact your revenge on him and the male sex as a whole for its crimes." The only flags on her record were a few dated infractions for child prostitution, which he suspects is probably where she developed such an extreme perspective on men.

When she finally catches up with him, she processes what he'd said aloud. "So if I understand you right," she muses, parsing everything out slowly, "You think _I'm_ a rapist. And you thought it would be a good idea to go on a date with said rapist. All by your lonesome."

It's an odd question to ask. "Well, how else was I meant to catch you?"

"You? Catch me?" she repeats amusedly, "Is that what you think is going on here?"

"Yes..." he says, having thought that much was obvious.

"You don't think you have that backwards?"

Sherlock is having difficulty following so she decides to spell it out for him. "Let me rephrase. Don't you think you should be running in the opposite direction?"

Sherlock doesn't know what she's going on about and his eyebrows furrow petulantly. "If I always ran the other way when someone cried murder how could I possibly do my job? And I don't think you're a rapist, I know."

She stares at him for a moment, apparently quite floored. She looks so genuinely baffled in a way that very nearly makes Sherlock second guess himself.

Then she laughs. It's a disconcerting laugh, how open and unguarded it sounds, clear like a bell. He can't understand what she finds so incredibly funny. He feels like he's missed something vital and now is on the blunt end of a joke.

"Alright, you got me. I was going to make it rain hell on earth before I let that man get away with what he did," she says like the idea is laughable, "As though I was going to let him die happily in a cottage in Nice."

Sherlock is getting the irksome, disgruntling feeling he's missed something. Confessions are meant to be like pulling teeth, not like giving away free donuts.

"You really like your profession don't you?" she asks, returning to casual conversation like she didn't just confess to one of the worst killing sprees of the newly-minted millennium, "These images don't bother you?"

"They are the facts. My opinion about them doesn't change them," he says, feeling unnaturally light-headed, "Facts.. have no empathy for people."

She looks amused, as if there's some irony to the situation that escapes him but not her.

"You were emotionally abused by your brother and you think you understand that, do you?" she enquires, completely out of the blue. He has no idea how she could have known that, something he'd never told anyone. What's worse is that it's true. The bedrock for all his convictions on the downfalls of emotion had been due to the influences of his brother, who had gone through the pains of proving it to him, the hard way.

Her saying that was certainly an effective way to cut those lofty ideals down to size. But what did she mean, in saying that?

She catches sight of something amongst the cacophony of images splayed out on the table. One photo stands out amongst the rest to her. He watches her pick it up, the look of shock on her face apparent and unguarded. But it's more than just shock. The slowness with which she peals it away from the rest, inch by inch, is magical to watch-- like the pictures are an old jigsaw puzzle and she's fitting the last piece into place.

The photograph she's holding is an autopsy photo, stitches and bruises marring the face of the deceased, and yet she can still recognize her. It's unmistakable that she's looking at none other than her own mother, with a novelty that suggests for first time in decades. He does the math- her mother was his first kill, after which he gradually became more unhinged and more liberal with taking lives, until none were exempt. She was first assaulted 40 years ago today, the same age as Irene.

"He was your father," he says aloud. Then it occurs to him she was the missing link he'd been looking for, the smoking gun he knew existed but could never find. "You. When he found out years after the fact that he had a daughter with one of his victims- your mother- he'd wanted to get rid of the evidence of his crime- to get rid of you. When your mother hid you from him he-" he stops, kicking himself, "Why didn't I see it? It was because of you. You're the reason he killed her."

The smile is no longer present on her face and he recognizes hers as the look of the woman who would kill all those people. "Yes, I'm well aware," she says boredly, "I was there."

Suddenly what she did doesn't seem so far of a stretch or unbelievable. When at the tender age of six one witnesses their father kill their mother, it's bound to change a person into something... else. That and the sheer feeling of powerlessness-

He lets out a gasp and clutches his head. His skin is burning and his vision brightens, searing into his skull, which is strange, seeing he'd served himself a glass only as a ploy to draw her in, not to drink it. He pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. She must've drugged him.

"How?" he asks, his mind frustratingly sluggish. They'd shared the same bottle and he knows she didn't tamper with his glass. Even if she had, he hadn't actually drank anything since she'd arrived-

"Cantharidin venom," she supplies, "It only works on men."

His eyes widen. She hadn't needed to touch his glass. In his eagerness to prove his theory, he'd made the fatal mistake of letting her kiss him- which had been a double edged sword. It hadn't occurred to him she'd poison him that way- he'd been too consumed with proving himself right. He tightens his hand where it's buried in his hair in fury. It was child's play- a cliche, even, and he'd fallen for it.

Before he can parse out her intentions or worry about what dosage she's given him, he swoons, collapsing on the table.

"Now what am I going to do with you?" he hears her say almost playfully now that she has him within her power, deliberating her options. Only now does he realize the danger he's placed himself in. He's the only one who knows she did it. He hasn't shared his findings with anyone else. He didn't even mention she was a suspect to John. John thinks he's on a _date_. If she has any sense she'll kill him right now. And it's not as though she doesn't know how.

 

 

 

 

John has trouble sleeping. He's gotten used to the violin teetering away into odd hours of the morning and now he can't sleep without it. He forces himself to uncover his head with his pillow when he hears two sets of footsteps at the door, one staggery and reeking of intoxication. He tells himself he doesn't care that they came home together. But hearing her laugh flips a switch in him and suddenly he's on his feet, reaching for the door. But then he stops when he realizes what he's doing, or rather realizes he has no idea what he's doing. His hand rests on the door knob, threatening to twist it open, but it never actually does.

 

 

 

 


	3. Smothered Mate

"Sherlock, you're here.. at four in the morning," Lestrade remarks, less than thrilled when Sherlock torpedoes into his office.

"Sorry, sir, couldn't stop him," Donovan apologizes in the entryway. Lestrade looks at her with a beleaguered, why-me face. "Should I have used force?" she asks, uncertain.

"You go home, Sally," he sighs, "I'll handle this."

Donovan eyes Sherlock. "I don't know if I like leaving you alone with him, sir-"

"That was an order, detective?" he says impatiently. Donovan nods and leaves.

"Didn't you get the news?" he asks Sherlock, "Case has been closed."

"Yet your killer remains at large." Having already made a beeline to his desk, Sherlock slams a sheet of paper on the table.

"God, I hope you don't go around telling the press that. He's not at large, he's dead. Evidence confirmed it was Sorace this morning." Taking the page Sherlock has handed him, Lestrade squints at what appears to be a bunch of squiggly lines in a square and doesn't know what to make of it. It's too early in the morning for Sherlock's antics. "What is this?" he asks flat-out. When Sherlock starts explaining, it goes a little over his head, so he pulls Anderson in to translate.

"Did you do this in that kitchen of yours you call a lab? It's not admissible," Anderson says, tossing the photocopy back onto the desk, into the metaphorical reject pile.

"You realize what this means? They are _related_ ," Sherlock impresses on them.

"Anderson?" Lestrade says, asking Anderson to confirm since reading raw DNA analysis is not his territory, it's Anderson's.

"He probably just cross contaminated the samples," Anderson shrugs, waving it off.

Sherlock gives him a withering look, his patience worn thin. "I'm a graduate chemist."

"Exactly," Anderson says, "You don't have a degree in forensic science."

"The more you talk, the less it seems like you have any understanding of what forensic science actually is."

"What exactly are you trying to prove? The DNA indicated the attacker was male. It was a match for Sorace."

"Your DNA _has been tampered with_ ," Sherlock says, frankly exhausted he has to spell everything out, "I've been meaning to ask you about that, Anderson. What was she doing in the precinct anyway? You didn't let her anywhere near your samples, did you?"

"What?" he fumbles, "Of course not." Sherlock groans internally at his idiocy and returns his attentions to Lestrade.

"This man died just as she was leaving- a man who just happened to have killed her mother and is a paternal match. That doesn't strike you as odd?"

"So you think she raped and killed _eight men_ for what, the sole purpose of giving him a heart attack?" Lestrade says dubiously, failing to see the connection. To say it's a bit of a stretch is an understatement.

"Sixty four," Sherlock corrects, at which Anderson snorts, not subtly stifling a laugh in a weak attempt to act professional. "Sorace is currently wanted on over five dozen international charges, all of which can be attributed to her."

Lestrade looks like Sherlock is trying to convince him the elves did it. "And she did all that, instead of switching his meds or killing him herself- why?"

"She wasn't trying to kill him- that was just a side effect. What she wanted was to make him suffer."

Lestrade looks at him blankly.

"Killing all those people in the same fashion he did and leaving them for him to find was a means of psychological torture," the words sit heavily in the room, eliciting sheer incomprehension and disbelief.

Lestrade sighs, threads his fingers together and puts on a diplomatic face. "Let's say the DNA checks out and they're related. The way I see it there are two possibilities. One, some woman's father, a known murderer, does what he does best and kills a lot of people or, two, said woman takes her father's MO and goes on a killing spree in order to terrorize him into an early grave and then frames him for it. Do you think you might, possibly, be reading too much into this? He has a known track record and she..." he types her name into the criminal record database, which, as expected, comes up blank, "we don't have her for anything."

"That doesn't mean she hasn't committed the crime, just that she hasn't been caught, which is a result of your forensics personnel being idiots. Clearly she's been exploiting the fact."

"Just drop it, Sherlock. Your whole theory is ridiculous," Anderson says, smugly crossing his arms, "You know, I'm curious, how did you even get her DNA, anyway? Did she 'rape' you too?" he asks. Sherlock's mouth opens with a response, but then clicks closed.

"This was a mistake," Sherlock states simply, retrieving the file, "Sorry for wasting your time."

He turns on his heel and walks off, leaving the two of them to suffer the whiplash of his complete 360. He'd so quickly cut them off with an eerie, forced civility, it gives Anderson the hibbie jeebies thinking about it. Sherlock rarely gave up that easily- it was like he'd just flipped the emotional off switch in his robotic brain and walked off- it was just _weird_.

"Sherlock-" Lestrade tries to say, but Sherlock doesn't hear it because he's already out the door.


	4. Fork

“Sherlock.”

Ignored.

“Sherlock, you have to eat something.”

Ignored.

“This is the _sixth day in a row_ \--”

“Shut up, John,” he says curtly, a particularly pleasant sort of venomous this morning.

It’s the first thing he’s said since he got up at the crack of dawn, pacing back and forth along the carpet like he can't stand not being in two places at once. His shoes make clicking sounds as they stride over the hardwood floor.

“You can’t keep pacing around ignoring me. This has to stop-“

“Do what you’re good at and go nurse your codependency issues elsewhere. Or better yet, do the world a favor and go lock yourself in a closet,” he says acerbically.

John has to wonder why Sherlock is being such a prat this morning, considering he just got laid. Not all of London is so fortunate.

John bolts up from his chair so that it legs screech along the floor, having decided that he can’t stand the insufferable hunger strike a moment longer.

He strides across the living room and stands face forward in front of Sherlock. Despite the fact that he’s standing directly in Sherlock’s way, Sherlock makes no change to his present course, intending either to push him aside or run him over.

But instead of becoming roadkill, John swoops down and wraps his arms around him, throwing him over his shoulder. Both of them fall deathly silent, taking a moment to process what has occurred. The surprise of being able to lift Sherlock clean off the ground snaps John out of the blind, unthinking rage that had originally prompted him to resort to such drastic measures. His intention had been to prove to Sherlock that he is well past underweight and borderline emaciated. He hadn’t necessarily expected it to work- or be this easy.

And Sherlock, he assumes, is stunned speechless simply because John has actually, literally, physically hoisted him over his shoulder, in all his intelligence and intellectual supremacy, like a light-weight child or girl.

“John…” he says in a deep, threatening, deeply discontented voice.

“Sherlock, I didn’t..“

“Put. Me. Down.”

John obeys and Sherlock walks away from him in a temper, then stops still. John looks at him, confused because there seems to be something coming out of his back, seeping onto his shirt.

“I’m bleeding,” Sherlock notes without turning around.

“Yes,” John confirms.

“I’ll just be a moment,” he says, walking promptly away.

“Wait, Sherlock—” John stammers as the brunet excuses himself and heads toward the bedroom. “Where do you think you’re going?” He asks, peaking around the corner of the hallway Sherlock vanished into, “Whatever’s happened to your back you can’t fix it by yourself.”

“It’s nothing John,” he retorts dismissively. He disappears into his bedroom and John files suit, feeling compelled to follow.

He finds him reaching into his dresser to grab a new shirt and stops him from rummaging nonsensically through his collection of Dolce et Gabbana.

“Come here,” John says, having had enough of Sherlock's asinine, counter-productive attempts at evasion and grabbing him by the arm. He drags Sherlock back into the living room to try to fix whatever nonsense Sherlock has done to himself this time.

John moves him to settee and is about to undo his collar when Sherlock does something that makes him stop short. He flinches from John's touch. John freezes.

“Sherlock..?” John asks uncertainly, retracting his hand.

“Sorry,” the detective rubs his temple, mentally kicking himself for acting in an irrational fashion, “Please continue, Doctor.”

John continues unbuttoning the shirt, his hands unsteady. He was naturally about to ask what had happened but now he’s having difficulty raising the question. That flinch spoke volumes. He’s usually more astute about the trend in women- the low eye contact, aversion to touch, erratic behavior— It’s impossible for him to ignore that Sherlock’s exhibiting the textbook signs of trauma. John's hands start shaking, so Sherlock silently takes over, undoing the buttons himself. 

While John was sleeping soundly last night, assuming Sherlock was being “normal” and getting laid, had he actually been— John forces that train of thought to a stop. He feels like he’s about to lose it. Was this something he could have stopped, had he been less stupid?

Sherlock has been busy undoing his shirt. When it comes undone, John’s not surprised to find the whip-like lacerations across his back. But he’s horrified by the state of his wrists, which have deep welts on them, like a rabid dog was trying to chew them off.

“What the hell did she do to your hands?”

“She didn’t do that, I did.”

John looks at him scathingly, as if to ask _what the hell is wrong with you._

“She forgot to take the handcuffs off.” John still looks at him in complete incomprehension.

“She… forgot?” John repeats, trying to get the story straight.

“Well, it wasn’t necessarily that she forgot,” Sherlock reluctantly admits, the implication being she intentionally left him in handcuffs, just to be cruel, or to demean or humiliate him or whatever it is dominatrixes do.

“Why didn’t you ask me to take them off?” John asks confused, bewildered even, and just a little annoyed at the absurdity that he nearly wore his wrists to the bone rather than ask for help.

Sherlock doesn’t answer the question, turning his face away so that a curtain of curls fall over his face. John hates to bear witness to how he keeps repeating these uncharacteristic mannerisms, one after another, textbook symptoms glaring him in the face. They don’t suit him at all.

John disinfects the wounds and bandages them. He’s wallowing in misery and berating himself for being an idiot for the entire duration of it. Horrible, deep-seated guilt overwhelms him at the thought Sherlock didn’t want to be seen by him in that state so badly- that he couldn't even let him know what was happening. If John hadn’t allowed him to feel that way this whole thing could have been prevented, the now-irreversible damage done, averted. 

“I’m sorry,” John says softly, “I didn’t know. I didn’t hear anything.”

“I didn’t want you to hear anything,” Sherlock says, his voice a grey, lackluster monotone. John swallows a lump in his throat, trying to bury the burning desire to demand _why?_

“That wasn’t your first time was it?” he asks after he’s finished, throwing away the some bloodied antiseptic dressage.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he replies tersely, buttoning his collar so that he’s his prim and proper self again. He’s cold in the extreme, icy even, pointedly composed so as to betray no weakness.

John takes a moment to muster up the audacity to say, “It’s not supposed to be like that you know.”

Sherlock blinks at him, seeing that John’s staring at him so intently. John steels himself and reaches for him, carefully this time, like Sherlock is wrapped in caution tape that says fragile. He breathes a sigh of relief he didn’t know he was holding back when Sherlock doesn’t recoil from him like before- when he finally manages to pull Sherlock's slender body completely into his arms. Blinking back the glassiness in his eyes, he turns toward Sherlock’s ear and presses a kiss against his dark hair.

Sherlock sits motionlessly in his arms, eyes distant and detached, fondling a pull string at the corner of John’s jumper.

When John comes back down from returning his medical supplies to his bedroom upstairs, he finds Sherlock in the kitchen handling two plates of eggs and toast.

“Breakfast?” Sherlock asks, giving him a sunny smile that nearly makes John lose his footing. His demeanor has dramatically changed- like night and day, leaving John awestruck at his seemingly instantaneous recovery. His heart thrums with bitter-sweet relief seeing the detective acting perfectly like himself again.

 

 

 


	5. Raking Bishops

 

It's the first time he's taken a break from the case, that Saturday late afternoon, summer sunshine peeking through the curtains. They're facing each other, sitting on the settee and leaning over the evening standard, the scent of over-steeped, growing-cold tea wafting in from the kitchen. John's ears prick up when he catches Sherlock chuckle at how he can't solve the crossword.

His laughter feels like a breath of fresh air. John meets and returns his gaze, somehow unaffected by the complete lack of personal space, entranced by the sonorous hills and valleys of his voice. Sherlock's hair falls against the side of John's nose when their foreheads touch. He smells like laundered linen and that high-end shampoo of his laced with vetiver against the clean, crisp scent of his starchy, steam-pressed shirt.

John is gripped by how precariously too-good-to-be-true it seems, the impossible sound of laughter, the unreal touch of Sherlock's head against his, and feels like he ought to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. The way the light dances playfully in Sherlock's eyes undoes John at the seams, pinpointing every known weakness he has, every razor-thin fissure in his armor. It's one of those rare moments when he feels like he actually _is_ Sherlock's husband after all, even if their marriage was something of a bet gone wrong at best, or a competition of who was the most stubborn at worst.

 

Oh right, about that.. perhaps he should explain. It's not exactly one of his proudest moments. Around the seventeenth time Sherlock had wound up in the ICU, it had gone something like...

"If I have to marry you so that you can never again give me crap about standing down when your life is at stake, then so help me I will," John said, no less content about their current predicament than the last sixteen iterations of this happening.

  
"Oh please, John," Sherlock scoffed, actually _scoffed_ , which, in retrospect, was not a smart thing to do when John was this angry. "Don't make me laugh. You'd never go through with it," he'd said, convinced that committing to a lifetime of grotesque experiments, unwarranted verbal abuse, and boredom-induced tantrums was too daunting an endeavour and too horrible a prospect for any rational human being to take on, which probably, for all intensive purposes, is true. His mistake, of course, had been that John wasn't thinking rationally. That Sherlock made him positively _ir_ rational.

And they'd carried on like that until they were standing at the alter and the priest fatefully asked Sherlock first. And Sherlock had said "yes," which was apparently code for _I dare you._

Only when John had said "Yes," back, mistaking his taunt for a real answer, had the smugness been wiped off his face. They both had suffered mild panic attacks after the fact. But all for naught apparently, since other than that he now enjoys some authority over what suicidal maneuvers Sherlock conducts with his life (kind of), and despite him having some difficulty explaining to women how he accidentally married his flatmate, marriage didn't exactly change much.. or anything, really. He supposes if anyone could turn marriage to a sexless, non-committal, virtually nonexistent thing, then it's the irreverent Sherlock Holmes.

 

John's fingers trace up Sherlock's palm, to his wrist. He stalls there, not prying under the cuff of his shirt to see the bandages he wrapped around his raw wrists earlier that morning. He lingers over the wound, hesitating. He is loathe to ruin the moment, having come to treasure these rare occasions when Sherlock isn't working a case or getting high, when he's not slipping through his fingers, when he's really there and even seems _happy_ ; but he knows he has to say something. And it's best to catch Sherlock when he's in one of the upswings of his mercurial nature, rather than the alternative.

"We have to at least report it," John says, trying broach the subject with as much finesse as possible.

Sherlock removes his hand from his and abandons his seat beside John, leaving the place where he touched vacant and cold. The comment hangs unanswered until it grows stale in the air. It was in vain that he'd hoped mentioning it would not kill the moment and interrupt the short-lived, blissful calm.

Sherlock relocates to the windowsill, crossing his arms and gazing down onto Baker Street, the breeze shifting in the curtains.

 

"We don't have to report anything," Sherlock replies curtly, dismissing the idea outright.

 

John's fingers bite into the edge of the sofa, feeling something irksome and untamable rise in his chest. "We can't just let her get away with-"

 

"I have no intention of letting her get away with anything," Sherlock overrides him, his response poised and measured.

 

"Then why are you fighting me on this?" John strains to understand, following him to the window and turning Sherlock by the arm to face him. In his frustration he finds himself unable to keep the tone of the conversation from becoming heated, the volume of his voice rising uncontrollably.

 

"What good will reporting it do?" Sherlock retorts, "She has leverage over everyone at Scotland Yard."

 

John falls silent when it occurs to him that her influence surpasses that of the law, and likely runs deeper than any adversary they’ve encountered before her. The only solution would be to go over her head entirely. Chewing his lip, he chooses his next words as carefully as possible.  "Then we have to tell your brother," he says firmly. He stands at attention, squaring his shoulders.

At first, Sherlock's glances at him in a light 'ohho-we're-going-to-tell-him-now-are-we?' way, thinking he must be joking- or if he's not, that he'll surely turn tail and rethink his thoughts. But when he doesn't, Sherlock's expression takes on a very different nature. The deafening silence of next few seconds sounds vaguely like a ticking time bomb about to go off. Sherlock locks eyes with him, as if he's scanning him with X-ray vision. It feels like the lightening has flashed and the thunder is soon to follow.

 

He ultimately gives John a flat-out categorical "no," with no further comment or explanation, and turns on his heel. To his credit, there's really no way he could have said it plainer than that.

 

"Sherlock-"

 

"Absolutely not," he says in clipped tones, having unilaterally decided the topic warrants no further discussion, and stalks off toward the foyer.

 

"Damn it, Sherlock, would you at least listen?" John asks after him, but Sherlock has left him to his machinations, disinterested in what else he has to say.

 

He curses and follows Sherlock down the stairwell.

 

"Why do you have to be so difficult?" John demands, his voice strained, cracking with the desire to reach out and hold him, grab him, ground him. John hates it when Sherlock reflexively pushes him away like this, keeping him at arm's length. His hands are tied, barred from helping him, which is its own kind of torture, making him feel unduly frustrated and helpless and sometimes like he very nearly wants to tear him to pieces.

 

"Why are you so intent on seeing Mycroft?" Sherlock retorts, forcefully civil and dangerously close to being not.

 

"Because your suspect is using means of extortion and corruption to exert pressure on the authorities in attempt avoid a life-time sentence in jail, where she rightfully belongs!" John blurts out, frankly shocked that it's not obvious. He realizes he's let his temper get the best of him from the way the walls ring with his voice. They've gotten multiple complaints from the neighbors about their too-frequent domestics and Mrs. Hudson constantly has to remind them to keep it down.

 

"Please," he whispers, stifling his anger and trying a softer approach, "Do this for me, at least. I can't do go on like this knowing what she did- " Sherlock is tense, his back turned, concealing his expression. John reaches for his hand, holding it tenuously in his fingers.

 

“We can't just pretend it didn't happen-“ he's trying to be as gentle and coaxing as possible, when really he just wants to pull him out the front door straight to the highest tier of government where there is no chance of the case getting “mishandled”.

 

"No, we are not going to him!" Sherlock says indignantly, like he's read John intentions through the simple gesture, his aversion to the idea becoming readily apparent. John is taken aback by the fierceness and near-violence with which he tears his hand away. 

"I can take care of her myself," he says with a fierce conviction set on his features, mirroring all of John’s frustration and then some, "I don't need my brother to come save me. I'm not some damsel in distress!"

 

John stares back in surprise at the outburst, having had no idea he was aggravating him that much, seeing that he hadn't said anything in particularly incendiary to warrant that sort of response. Sherlock looks away, trying to contain himself, plaster on a mask of composure and suppress his emotions as he always does, although the irrepressible anger that's suddenly taken hold of him is bleeding through.

"I've never needed his help to put criminals away and I don't need it now," he hisses under his breath. He scales back up the steps to their flat, willfully being elusive. John bites his tongue, wishing he could manage to explain how it isn’t about that, how it has nothing to do with his mettle as a detective or his capacity to solve crime. Not liable to let him escape so easily, he follows after him, up the steps back into the living room.

 

"This criminal _attacked_ you-" John insists, or rather implores, willing him to consider that surely that warrants an exception. He needs him to acknowledge somehow that what happened was not just something that came with the territory in the line of work, that they can’t just sweep it under the rug and carry on with business as usual.

 

"So the moment she gets the upper hand, you lose faith in me is that it?" Sherlock demands suddenly. John is completely floored by the accusation- the thought- the _notion_ of it never having occurred to him as even possible. Sherlock just went from being ridiculous to absurd in 5 seconds flat. 

Sherlock is pacing back an forth, circling him like he's trying to find a way forward but can't. He's wrestling with himself, coursing his fingers through his dark curls like he wants to pull his hair out. 

"Sherlock-" John starts, his voice wavering uncertainly. He knows he has tread cautiously but he can’t even seem to find the words.

 “You think I am no longer capable of seeing this though, is that it?" he demands with vulnerable undertones of despair mixed with rage, "For once, I've finally met my match. I've been defeated. I've _lost_. I've fallen in your eyes- so you go running to my brother. Is that how it goes?" The splitting pain in his voice, and what’s worse, the hateful the way he displaces it all with a cool casual drawl, is unconscionable.

 

John looks at him like he's speaking alien.  "No, that's not- Sherlock, listen to me," he tries to level with him. It's all wrong. It’s so false it’s borderline blasphemous. He wants to deny it and convince him otherwise if he'd just give him leave, but Sherlock's gaze stops him in his tracks, pins him against the wall and strangles the words in his throat. John bites down until he tastes blood.  He would kill for him to just say something, anything, to break the silence instead of holding them static in this unbreathable, horrible tension that Sherlock somehow finds fitting and comfortable.

 

Finally, in resignation, he says, "I'm not what I used to be to you anymore.”

 

"What?" John breathes a shallow, tenuous, glassy breath he didn't realize he was holding. Sherlock's comment leaves him confused but hesitant to question it, like he's walking on eggshells.

 

"I suppose, this sort of thing is unbecoming on a man," he mutters. 

  
John’s eyebrows furrow in consternation, trying to piece together what the hell he is saying. "What are you talking about?" 

"You don't look at me the same," he says, finally addressing him, "Now all you look at me with is pity. Like I'm broken." His voice- the way he hesitates finishing that sentence- it turns the world to static and free-falling ash, the idea itself so foreign to John he can't even believe the words he's hearing. He sees his lips moving but the words don't make any sense.

“You used to look at me like I was God and now-“ Sherlock stops short. He looks at him with a sort of resignation that he can barely swallow.  “You look down on me,” Sherlock concludes and a smile twists on his features with the awful irony of it, like it's some cosmic joke. John can only stand there speechless, shaking like a shell-shocked recruit on day one. It feels like a blow to the chest, knocking the wind out of him, and then the horror dawns on him that Sherlock actually believes what he's saying, completely unawares that John would take a thousand and one of his insults if it meant one word of thanks, that John adores him in a semi-dangerous, questionably unhealthy way that wrecks havoc all his priorities, job and love-life included, that no matter what anyone ever said or did John could never think less of him.

"No-" his voice breaks despite his best efforts. The distance between them suddenly seems so vast, too vast, and as he feels himself falling to his knees he reaches out for him. It's all wrong, so horribly wrong but he can't think of what to say to undo it.

And then the words come to him. "You are," he admits because his hand is forced and he can't have Sherlock thinking he's anything less, despite the glaring obviousness he's incriminating himself by saying things like this out loud. Normally he would have more reservations, speaking so blatantly on matters much better left unsaid. But now all he can think is 'please think anything but that-'  

"If you thought that you wouldn't be seeking Mycroft's help!" Sherlock thunders with a flare of temper and violent throw of his hand. He turns away after issuing his condemnation, presumably go lick his wounds and sulk, but instead John grips his shirt to keep him there, willing him to understand, wanting to hammer it into his staggeringly idiotic, ingenious mind.

"No, you are- You _are_ ," he says with such adamance he imagines it must faze him- that Sherlock can't not feel an unexpected thrum of pleasure seeing John kneeling like that in front of him and telling him he's God. "That is exactly _why_ I'm saying we have to tell him."

Sherlock spares a glance at his grip on his sleeve and goes quiet. His chest is still heaving, but he looks as if John has appeased him, albeit has still caused him a great deal of suffering and grief.

"Consult with Mycroft if you must," he says finally with dark, soft eyes that look like a deserted battlefield, "but I'll have no part in it."

John can't prevent a grateful smile from spreading across his face. "Sherlock-" he says, rising to his feet and feeling like he wants to hug him, despite how he's probably made of thorns and razor blades and bear traps and liquid nitrogen and other sharp, pointy things..

"Don't thank me!" he breathes, aghast, as if John has somehow offended him. Sherlock rids John's hand from his sleeve before John can even approach, in a motion so rapid he could swipe the tablecloth from beneath a set of crystal dining ware without displacing anything. John's fingers almost sting of rug burn.

He returns John's expression of relief with a burdened, heated glare that takes John completely by surprise, something hateful, insufferable, like jealousy written all over it. "I would think you've mortified me enough haven't you?" he demands with an alarming amount of vehemence, as if he's the object of some cruel joke- although John feels a bit off-set by that and can't help but feel like he's the one who should feel embarrassed-- after what he just said? Sherlock turns his back, obscuring his face so that John can't see whatever weakness it may betray.

"There was a time when you would look like that because of me," he eventually, very reluctantly explains, his hands bearing down on the back of the wooden chair next to his desk. It creaks in disapproval under his clenched fists, "Now you've abandoned all of the abilities you once lauded me for in favor of my _brother's_."

"That's not it-"

"Isn't it-?"

"Christ, would you stop being so infernally-" John starts, meaning to put a hand on his shoulder, but Sherlock swerves around the chair he's all but snapped in half and leaves before he can.

He retires to his room, the door slamming behind him.

It takes John a moment to realize his hand is hanging in midair and that he should probably pocket it. John clenches and unclenches his aching fist, trying to suppress the gnawing, unsettling urge to follow him. He quite literally wants to break down his door and tell him what an idiot he's being but thankfully refrains, knowing something about Sherlock makes him an exceptionally poor communicator and that the language barrier always seems to get worse when emotions are running high.

He watches the detective's shadow play by the door as the he paces, attempting to subdue his stormy thoughts, which John knows he will only let fester and torment himself with. After a long stretch, he somehow, reluctantly, tears his eyes away.

He makes his way to the kitchen and sees that not only has the tea been over-steeped, but has now long grown cold. John starts the stove and sets the kettle on, counting the steps the detective takes in the room adjacent. He can't stand the idea of living with this and not doing anything about it. But then he thinks of the scathing look of betrayal Sherlock had on his face all from the mere mention of Mycroft. It was horrible, unlike anything he'd ever seen or ever wanted to see directed at him.. not from Sherlock. He sighs and cards a hand through his hair, watching the tea brew. Eventually John gives in and pours a second cup of mighty leaf, making his way from the kitchen down the corridor to his room.

"Sherlock?" he asks, uncertain if he'll get a response, "I've made more tea."

"Sherlock?" he asks again, leaning into the door. The silent treatment. Stellar.

John nudges open the door and finds him there, nursing his wounds. He places the mugs on the nightstand and stands behind him in silence awkwardly, not certain of what he should do. He wants to wrap him in his arms from behind, somehow explain himself, make the pain he'd caused go away. He wants to feel his muscles relax, feel his hair brush against his nose again like in the briefest moment that morning when everything was alright.

 

Careful to avoid his injured wrist, he reaches for him, managing to get him to turn, if only a little. Sherlock looks at him funny in a way he doesn't quite understand– as if mortally wounded, yet graceful in defeat, resigned to some invisible fatal weakness, some unspoken Achilles’ heel.

He wants to tell those under-siege eyes everything but doesn't know how. In fact, he rather thinks he shouldn't tell him, how it's killing him inside and he can’t simply forget or take it in stride, how he's not as resilient as his counterpart is. He wants to vent his frustrations, the rageful pain battering inside him like a hurricane, not knowing how he could ever get him to understand that he's his  _everything_ and it terrifies him.

 

"I meant it- what I said," John offers softly, not exactly proud of it, but part of him wants to say it out loud anyway, feeling warmth rise on his cheeks at the acknowledgement.  "You must know it, too. I think you enjoy it, how I-" He loses his voice for a moment and clears his throat, "I think of you _without equal._ " He imagines Sherlock's ego must be having a victory dance at his expense right about now. He really needs to stop handing Sherlock free reasons to over-inflate his sense of self worth.

 

"Then what on earth do we need him for?" Sherlock challenges. The question is softer now, but somehow even more resolute. John is about to open his mouth, but then there's a faint trace of a smirk on the corner of Sherlock's mouth that makes John's stomach flip. It occurs to him that the question was a rhetorical. While his smile is subtle, it's also breathtakingly daring and cocky and John doesn't trust himself to respond to it without botching up the words like an idiot.

 

"Sherlock-" he breathes hesitantly in disapproval, unable to shake these perplexing, deep-set anxieties he's at a loss to explain but can't really place. His hand tightens on his sleeve. “It’s not just that, it’s- you’re..“

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. John huffs and looks at him, in awe of how, with just one effortless look, he can reduce everything he'd planned to say into cat-caught tongues and white noise. _You’re everything to me._ He’d wanted to say. _Don’t you get that? You’re not something I can risk losing._

“Here,” he settles for instead, shoving a mug of tea in his hand before it grows cold again in an obvious effort to save face and distract from his embarrassing display of incoherence. He still can’t stop thinking about it though as he sips his own tea, ill at ease with the fact that she's at that very moment walking around scot-free, maybe even looking for her next victim. That is, if she's even done with Sherlock, which for reasons he can't explain, feels a lot like wishful thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I had to drop that bomb about them being married on you like that but it had to be done, since we like skipped the first few chaps. Also sorry that I did not get to the part where they meet Irene again yet... gah, I wanted to go there. Next time, folks, next time.  
> Anyway, so tragic how Sherlock got demoted. You know, I'm going to stop talking now because Sherlock is giving me a scary look. If you want the next chap pay me in kudos. bye


	6. Direct Opposition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. Special thanks to those who commented on chapter 2 and reminded me to make a chapter 3.

“Sherlock, I’m going to Sainsbury’s,” so he’d said. A likely story.

He had no reason to doubt John's intentions.

He didn’t feel the need to leap to his feet and watch John cross the street from his balcony window.

And when he did, he told himself he didn’t care the nearest Sainsbury’s was 1.2 kilometers in the **_opposite direction._**

And when he grabbed his coat and started tailing John down Baker Street, well, that was purely recreational and had nothing to do with the idea that John was going elsewhere was driving him just a little bit crazy. The way his pace quickened to join him on the kerb so that he wouldn’t lose him, winding through foot traffic and clipping shoulders, in no way indicated he was even remotely interested in John’s intents or whereabouts at all.

As he continued to follow the him, not even hearing the angry honks as he commandeered the crosswalks, gradually his suspicions were confirmed. John was headed to the Diogenes club with the intention of seeing his brother, which was fine, perfectly fine, not that it was consuming his every waking thought or anything. One car screeched to a halt six inches from him and was rear-ended by another. When the drivers started yelling abuse at each other, causing something of a scene, Sherlock simply ignored them and walked around, more pressing matters on hand.

Just as Sherlock was about to lose what patience he had and make his presence known, John unexpectedly slipped into a shop on the mall strip and disappeared from view- that is, before Sherlock could corall the man into a corner and make him stop doing things that didn't bother him at all. Sherlock looked up and saw that the storefront read Sainsbury’s. It was the local version, conspicuously larger in comparison to the Sainsbury’s metro located 1.2 km from their flat. And somehow it just happened to be located right next to the Diogenes. Perhaps he would have known this, possibly, had he ever gone grocery shopping himself.

Just when he was starting to consider the possibility that perhaps he was being over-paranoid, Mycroft showed up from his luxury tinted-window car at ten o’clock on the mark, and Sherlock realized that no, he didn’t like this at all. Because then John came out with a bag of useless edibles and some hardware including drywall (had he really damaged the fuse box that badly when he shot it?) and bumped into Mycroft, despite the fact Mycroft had something on the order of 24 different bodyguards  _explicitly meant_ to prevent that sort of thing from happening.

 

Mycroft looked him up and down. “John.”

“Mycroft,” John breathed in surprise.

“Everything alright with Sherlock, I trust.” Mycroft had offered his usual slimy, polite smile. John hadn’t said anything.

"You’ll have to excuse me-" Mycroft had said, "I’ve an urgent matter to attend to." And Mycroft had walked off to worry about whatever global crises he was juggling, and John had watched, and Sherlock had watched him watch. It took Mycroft all of 5.6 seconds to slow his steps and deduce something was indeed wrong, stopping in his tracks beneath the Duke of York column.

All was still and Sherlock was thinking perhaps, _perhaps_ they would just move on, go their separate ways, but-

“Wait.” John had finally cracked, his voice broken, and Mycroft had turned, seeing his conflicted face.

How- _how_ that had happened, is something he will never fathom. And before anyone asks, the reason that his body had turned hot, trembling head to foot with rage like a six-foot totem pole of jealous envy, was _not_ because the sight of John seeking consul from his brother bothered him in the slightest. 

 

 

That was how he ended up in the Diogenes billiard room, glaring holes into the decorative, mauve curtain shielding him from view as he watched the two men converse in the lounge across the hall. 

"How may I be of service?" Mycroft asks with his usual, insufferable drawl. Sherlock rolls his eyes.

"Still having trust issues I see," someone comments behind him.

“I'm not-“ Sherlock snaps around, ready to inflict some select words on whoever dare suggest he’d act upon trust issues or insecurities or jealous compulsions more befitting a snubbed ex-girlfriend.

But the air stands still once he realizes exactly whom he’s addressing.

Sherlock takes a step back, the curtain falling from his fingertips, forgotten.

Her unmistakable eyes blaze back at him, seeming to enjoy the wash of transparent emotions that play over his face. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised to find her here, where the forces of government secretly congregate and interlock. For those looking to insinuate themselves into the annals of power there’s really no better place to be. He tries to repress his strong distaste of the way her gaze cuts right through him - like how one would look at plaything-- like he's something for sport, for amusement.

"Losing him already?" she enquires, though it's more of a taunt, overflowing with non-concern.

"That was fast. I did tell you this would happen if he found out," she says, toying with a cue ball.

It takes every ounce of control he has to keep his face from betraying the dark, simmering anger the words elicit, or what's worse, the nagging fears that she might be right. While it's not something he likes to admit, he's losing traction, his footholds slipping, scrambling to hang on to the way they were before. 

"After all, he only loves you because you outsmart your opponents. If you can't do that then, well, what are you?" His hands clench helplessly at his sides and her eyes flick immediately to the gesture. Then he becomes aware she's keeping track of all his tells, the tension of his shoulders, the defensive set of his jaw. Her gaze is trailing over him in appraisal, searching for any hint of vulnerability, like a shark sniffing for blood in the water. "Now that you've lost your luster, I wouldn't be surprised if his infatuation with you came to a screeching halt."

Rather than fend off her slights, he turns the conversation on its head and takes to resuming the interrogation he didn’t get the chance to finish the other night (which admittedly, hadn’t gone according to plan.)

“How did you do it?” he asks.

It’s the one snag holding him back, the one link in the chain that’s missing. His logic has to be ironclad to convince Scotland Yard of any of this, given that idea that a female suspect was responsible for the rape-homicides of countless male victims had been met with skepticism at best. The limited and biased imaginations of the yard been a thorn in his side since the beginning, not to mention all the political corruption hindering the investigation.

"Indeed, how?" she asks, mock-pondering the question, "I imagine it must blast a large, gaping hole in your theory. After all, how could a woman possibly impose her will on a man?"

His temper flares as she stands casually in front of him, direct evidence to the contrary and yet feigning ignorance, as if what she did to him had never happened.

Looking up from admiring her own nails, she quirks a smile, "Honestly, who would believe such a thing?"

Now she's literally just saying things to get a rise out of him. He glares at the thinly-veiled sarcasm, irritation festering inside him at how that is exactly what's happening. No one believes him. Bureaucratic pressures have culminated in rendering her untouchable. She smiles with satisfaction when his hands tighten almost imperceptibly at his sides at her behest, having struck a nerve. He clenches his jaw, not sharing in her amusement.

“It would seem both you and I have time to kill,” she says, in light of his leisure time activities (that is, hiding behind a curtain and spying on John).

Sherlock eyes her warily as she circles around him, a smirk on her lips that’s been irrevocably woven into his memory. The room is empty except for them, with a few distant voices talking in the parlor room adjacent. The lamplight scatters a dim, diffuse glow across the floor in an otherwise darkened room. She steps nearer, boxing him into the corner of the room, the wall ever present at his back. Her fingers linger on the small table between them and the wall.

“How about we play a game?” she asks.

Sherlock stares back at her in a daze of confusion. Slowly, his eyes travel to the chessboard she’s referring to on the table.

“You want to play chess,” he clarifies to see if he understood her right. “With me,” he indicates himself, the _you do realize who I am?_  tacitly implied.

His gaze narrows on her skeptically. They’re in the lounge billiard room. She has the option of choosing any game to her liking- she couldn’t have picked something she had more of a chance of winning, say, pool, darts, or cards? It cannot escape her that her choice in game has given him a clear advantage.

Undeterred, she draws out a chair and takes a seat at the game board. “I'll tell you what, if you win I will walk over to Scotland Yard right now and turn myself in,” she says brazen-faced, twirling a dark pawn in her fingers. A stroke of inspiration glints in her eyes and her smile curves steadily upward. “Or better yet, I'll tell you how I did it."

Tempted by the alluring proposal, he hovers closer to the table skirting the window sill, eyes falling on the glimmering chess pieces. Needless to say, he likes this idea very much. “And if I lose?” he asks, touching his fingers down on the surface of the table.

  
“Well then…” she trails, pondering it over, or at least pretending to, “I’m sure we could come to some sort of an arrangement.”

The proposition is not ideal, but at the same time, not entirely surprising either. He weighs it in his mind but ultimately stops thinking of the consequences, completely reeled in, where all the other threads have been completely worked out, by the promise of that final, nagging piece of the puzzle.

He sits down, indicating they have reached a mutually satisfactory arrangement.

 

 

Unaware of the proceedings occuring in the game room, John and Mycroft are continuing their conversation not more than ten feet away.

  
“So, tell me how I can be of service,” Mycroft was saying after taking their seats, getting straight to the point.

"I want her gone,” John says tersely.

Mycroft’s expression falls. “You’ve taken issue with _her_ , I imagine?”

“No I..." John starts, then conceeds, his shoulders slumping, "Well, yes."

Mycroft casts him a knowing glance. “It would seem my brother has gotten himself entangled in a case a little over his head," he says in a soothing voice. John is too aggravated not to accept his consolation or contest it, as he normally would.

"Something happened during the case. I wasn't there. I--” John bites down hard, he veils his eyes with a hand and tries to breathe. I _failed_.

“Adler has proven… difficult to extricate," Mycroft explains, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, "She's got a number of high-ranking officials in parliament as well as the chief superintendent under her thumb, which is why I presume you've encountered some... difficulties."

"I'm aware of her connections," John says, casting a downward glace at his dour reflection on the glass-topped table, "That's why I'm here."

Mycroft sighs. "Her reach extends well above me, John. I’m afraid almost nothing short of a governmental coup will be enough to rid London of her influence.”

Then painstakingy, he admits, "In a way, she's... got me too." John looks aghast.

"This goes beyond anything she could possibly have on you-" he checks himself, realizing that was something of an unwarranted outburst.

John clenches his hand, digging his nails ino his palm. Mycroft doesn't seem to be understanding him. "She... She's done something Mycroft. She-" John struggles, but it catches in his throat. He can't say it.

Mycroft stands and John looks up at him, startled. "It pains me to see this too," he says pensively, tobacco smoke winding in the air, "I should have never gotten him involved with her." There's clearly some remorse in his voice as Mycroft lowers his cigarette and rubs it out in the ashtray.

"I'll see what can be done. In the meantime, try to keep him away from her," he says with a sigh and takes his leave.

 _Him_ away from _her_? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

John stares after him, then sinks his face into his face hands. Just talking about it with someone else makes it seem more real. He hadn't been able to say it out loud. He's hardly able to admit it to himself, much less others.

Regardless of how many victims just like Sherlock he'd handed over to the police, he hadn't a clue what it was like. If he's honest with himself he's remarkably ill-prepared for this kind of grief. It's excruciating and there's no prospect of closure- just the constant, nagging anxiety that the same thing might happen again. He clenches teeth, holding back a sob, and tries not to tear his hair out.

 

 

 

As the match progresses it becomes readily apparent she’s an average player with no cards or tricks up her sleeves, any subversive, underhanded tactics conspicuously lacking from her repertoire. If anything, her limited amount of strategic knowledge would be disappointing if he didn't stand to gain from it.

Only three minutes in, she’s down seven pieces and Sherlock has concluded he can finish the game within the next ten moves. Another minute and he’s planned out several, redundant routes to capture her king, drawing from a series of dusty, antediluvian strategies she’ll never have even heard of. Eight minutes in and he's locked down inevitable success- there is no possible move she can make to win and the game is over. Now it’s just a matter of letting it play out.

She smirks at the elaborate architecture of his pieces, rife with esoteric traps and gambits.

“What’s so funny?” he frowns.

“You,” she says forwarding her rook. His knight takes it, leaving her queen open. “Always missing the point.”

He trains his eyes on her, suspicions roused. "How so?" he asks, awaiting her play.

"Everything is a competition to you," she says, moving her queen to the side. She seems to be not be entirely engaged in the game, giving off the impression she's not actually trying to win, which is, in itself, puzzling. Though she takes some small pleasure in taking his knight. "A challenge to see who's smarter and you don't like to be bested."

Perhaps it's a natural conclusion to draw, one that may even be true, but he struggles to follow what she's playing at exactly. He can't tell what bearing this has on the game, if any. He’s aware some players use psychological tactics to intimidate their opponent, however it's weak ploy normally used to gain an edge, not to salvage a hopeless situation.

“You have this pathological desire to win, even if it kills you,” she says. The comment disorients him. There's something admittedly unnerving, even foreboding, about the almost-literal phasing of it. He doesn't quite understand what he'd done to betray that information, or how she'd gleaned that from a simple chess game.

It occurs to him that he's stalled and she's waiting for his move. Realizing it's his turn, quickly he returns his attentions to the game, rearranging his pieces to entrap her elusive queen.

He knows her next move before she lifts her hand: the diagonal sweep of her queen across the board. Having grown impatient waiting for this final move, he fails to wait for her to finish, jumping the gun. Without even thinking, his hand reaches over hers to enlist his knight in a unescapable check-mate, sealing their fate.

“I’m curious to see what would happen if you ever encountered a game you couldn’t win-" As they’re moving simultaneously, their fingers touch by accident, sending a jolt up his spine. He retracts his hand as if he’s been burned, knocking over his own king in his haste. He struggles to quiet the sudden hammering of his heart and get ahold of himself. An irrational, visceral sensation had come out of nowhere and taken him over- a surge of panic that left him rattled and hardly able to think.

He watches as the piece falls over, the imagery of forfeit happening right before his eyes.

He's borderline incredulous he could be so easily off-set by a single touch.

Then the sensation spikes again as her hand travels to his leg under the table. He tries to clamp down on the rising panic in an effort to maintain some semblance of control. He schools his thoughts, telling himself to focus on the board, that he can still salvage his fallen pieces and finish the game.

Then her hand starts to migrate upward.

He stands up, nearly knocking over the table in the process. The game pieces topple to the floor and he watches them roll on the ground, feeling light-headed. Amid his blaring senses, a pulse that won't stop hammering in his ears, skin that won't stop burning, he detects a faint laugh.

"Knowledge and power are two different things, Mr Holmes," she says, sounding as if she might tag on a  _silly you_ to the end of that sentence. His whole body goes cold. It feels like lead in his heart when he realizes she just beat him- the statistically impossible just happened; a freak incident he has no means of rationalizing or making sense of.

She stands and follows him as he fumbles backward in a series of ungraceful steps, backing him into the wall. He doesn't understand why he's reacting like this.

Is it possible that his mind is really so brittle, literally at the mercy of one fatal pressure point? To imagine that he could be so shaken by something so innocuous as a brushing of fingers or a touch on the leg. 

She, too, is in awe of how she holds so much power over him, as if his volition and free will were just reins in her hands. She's endlessly fascinated by how with just a touch she can reduce him to skittish, nervous wreck. The worst of it is she seemed to already have been aware she could do this to him.

He quickly runs out of ground and his back presses up against the wall. He falls against the bookshelf, a tome on the _Illiad_ falling to the floor. She picks up the volume and slowly slides it back in place, leaving them inches apart. She watches him swallow, his throat dry, silently chiding himself at the way his stomach turns.

The sickening realization occurs to him how the tables have turned, how she has him exactly where she wants him, how in one fell swoop the odds have been evened. She'd never intended to walk into Scotland Yard and divulge the details of her crimes.

He looks at her with incomprehension, at a loss as to how she had known him better than he knew himself.

How is it that what he couldn't do in ten moves she could do in one?

"You want to know how I did it?" she returns to the subject of the interrogation, finally addressing the question he'd so badly wanted to know, the one he'd staked himself on. "Really, it had nothing to do with strength..." She touches his face as if he were made of delicate, rippable paper and he goes still. The touch invokes the memories of what she did to him, and when they resurface, force him to relive the vivid, lurid details of he night before last. But he refuses to reveal how much he hates the gesture by resisting, which would be an admission of weakness. "...And everything to do with weakness."

Whereas it's a struggle for Sherlock to understand her, she finds him remarkably easy to read. It's a delight to witness how transparently his face betrays him despite his best efforts, and great sport to watch him slowly break apart under the weight of his own convictions. He expects himself to handle it coolly and rationally when really it's absurd to think he even could. He tries to convince himself what's happening is merely injurious to his body and not to his mind, which he holds in such esteem it doesn't occur to him that it can break too, that it's no more immune to torture than his body is.

In a last ditch effort at self-preservation he looks away, trying to conceal the humiliation on his features and salvage the broken and bruised remains of his pride. She turns his face to the light, relishing the sight of his cool, burning eyes that have nearly lost all their haughtiness and condemnation in favor of a more docile nature, sombre like a broken mustang.

He flinches when her thumb ghosts against his lips, pressed together in a hard line in an endeavor to keep his face neutral and expression muted, in spite of the misery with which he fails. Her heart flutters at the mixed expression, the softness of his shame so palpable, so ripe she could practically sink her teeth into it. 

He's trying so hard to mask his pain it's nearly endearing. As though she's not taking the scars she left him with, unlacing John's stitches, reopening the wounds and dumping salt into them. As though she's isn't crushing him like he's made of glass, leaving him in shatters, broken in all the ways that matter.

"You're so perfect," she says in a low growl, fully aware of how uncomfortable the comment makes him, twisting knots in his stomach. "God I want to ruin you," she breathes, her fingers insinuating in his hair. He closes his eyes in silent prayer, trying to keep calm and collected despite the PTSD. It makes her want to laugh.

"Rather than tell you how I did it, how about I show you?" she offers and she feels a shiver run through him. He's barely able to hold his rampant, irrational panic in check at the words, yet he manages to look at her again, a herculean feat in itself.

"I..." He's commanding his body to answer back, but when it doesn't cooperate, he mentally curses himself. 

She tries dangling the carrot closer to his nose. "All you have to say is yes." He opens his mouth but no words come out. His expression is really quite priceless, every inch of him struggling, and despite it all, he's still trying to pretend he isn't.

She can read the thoughts on his face, his lips mouthing the words but nothing comes out.

 _Yes, say yes, damned transport._   

Instead, to her amazement, he folds. He slips past her and actually  _flees_ the room, shielding his eyes with a hand.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one gets me everytime.  
> Sherlock can't win this, I really wish he'd stop trying.  
> I'm ransoming the next chap (which is the beginning) for 10 kudos. Or a comment- 2 comments and it's yours. It's more case-ficy but at least explains why Irene goes around killing and raping ppl and how he catches her (or how she catches him?). Also since people were curious, I might be able to fit in the night of the incident, but that might need to be it's own chapter. will see...


	7. En Prise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... fair warning, this chap is uncomfortable.

Sherlock darts to the sink in the WC, feeling sick. The Diogenes' lavatory, like all of its rooms, is repulsively elegant and dully lit, with granite countertops the colour of envy and beveled obsidian walls. The whole complex reeks of all things evil, from the villainous wallpaper closing in from all sides to the aristocratic stuffiness that's thick enough to choke on. It's all rather befitting of his brother's lair, where untold crimes against humanity have no doubt been conceived.

He leans on the counter after retching up the non-existent contents of his stomach and glares at his reflection in the mirror, judging his transport for its rampant failings.

He'd lost his nerve. He was meant to be the one cornering her, not the other way around. There was a food chain wherein victims were preyed on by criminals and criminals were preyed on by him. He was meant to be on _top_ of it not on the bottom.

Instead he'd buckled and ran like he was still in grade school. He veils his face with a hand that infuriatingly insists on shaking.

He had to get her to make a mistake. He'd narrowed in on the perpetrator, now it was just a question of catching her. And there was only one kind of trap for this particular brand of criminal- he was looking at it in the mirror.

 

 

As he's washing his hands under the running water her hands wrap around his waist from behind. The gesture elicits a huff of surprise from him, even though he should have seen it coming a mile away- a testament to the state of distraction he's in.

"Do you normally frequent the men's restroom or is this a passing fancy?" he says, looking over his shoulder. He can feel her eyes all over him, ghosting down his back. He rolls his eyes, thankful he's not been infected by the influenza called lust that turns people into salivating animals.

"We can go to the women's if you prefer," she offers.

"I don't think that would fix the problem," he replies. She smiles at that, amused at how he always goes through the pains of maintaining that proper and aloof facade.

He glances at the ceiling and spies a camera posing as an innocent fire sprinkler, for once grateful his brother is so paranoid he has even the lavatory under surveillance. Now was the time to use that convenient scientifically proven fact she was attracted to him to his advantage and manipulate her into slipping up. If he could get her to say something on record only the killer would know, it would be enough to put her behind bars.

To that end, he tells himself to breathe and be as compliant as possible, letting her proceed with the hope she will be more inclined to incriminate herself in this manner.

He's willing to play along if it gets him what he wants.

"I was curious whether you were coming back," she says. Sherlock contains his annoyance at the jab at how his transport momentarily highjacked him and commands it to _flirt back_.

"Did you miss me that badly?" He says, trying to emulate your average household doormat and its aspirations of being walked all over.

"You ran off just when it was getting fun. Playing hard to get?"

"Well I'm certainly not easy-" he starts to say, defiant. But he checks himself and remembers that he's actually  _supposed_   _to be acting easy._

"Now we both know that's not true," she murmurs reverently into the nape of his neck. The obscure comment an serves as a reminder of what happened that night before last. It's unsettling but he suppresses the feeling. He lets her press into his hair, though the sensation is unusual to him, feeling foreign. "You know, no one likes a tease."

He full-heartedly agrees. "You're right. So why don't we skip to the part where you show me how you did it?"

"Eager, are we?"

He huffs, causing his curls to flop, getting annoyed with the insufferably slow pace. You shouldn't have to beg to get murdered in this day and age.

"I would think you would be too at the prospect of a willing victim," he tries not to pout but it comes out like that anyway. She's not exactly picky about her victims, and even if she were, he would fit the profile, so why isn't she taking the bait?

Amused, she tilts her head, looking at him curiously like he's some sort of exotic alien life form. "Drawn to death and averse to sex. You really are wired backwards-" The nettlesome touch of her hand against his face is unwelcome but he supresses the urge to swat it away.

She didn't call him a freak but it's what she's thinking, along with the fleeting thought that the juxtaposition of his weirdness with his pretty face is very odd to behold. He holds himself in check, despite the fact that she's leering at him the way a wolf looks at meat (he's not sure whether it classifies as lust, cannibalism, or something in between).  _Interrogate_ , he tells himself.

"You usually kill your victims promptly, typically within two to three hours," he says, trying not to sound impatient, “Why are you keeping me alive? What are you waiting for?” Is she toying with him? Either she's yanking his chain or she's actually enjoying this tedious game of cat-and-mouse- Well, she's laughing now, suggesting she's enjoying it quite a lot.

  
"Rest assured, Mr. Holmes, I will, or at least, you'll want me to, once I'm done with you. As you've already been made aware, I don't kill anyone without first giving them what's due. And I have something else in mind for you," she says.That wasn't good enough. Anderson would probably write it off as roleplay or something equally stupid. Feeling ill at the words, he retracts, the floor slanting on its axis. What does she intend to do exactly? She can't be keeping him alive just to have sex with him... can she?

"I was under the impression you preferred women."

She laughs at that.

He decides he officially hates how dark and obscured her sense of humor is- he doesn't understand it, and things he doesn't understand, he can't predict, which is unnerving.

"On the contrary. I adore men. You are so fun to play with. It's fun to watch you think you're in control." She watches his reaction, cataloguing how he becomes nervous beneath the facade of his- the slight temperature rise of his skin, his subconscious picking up on the threat of danger in awkward, fleeting sensations he can't categorize. Criminals had always been to him what prey was to a predator, but now he's not entirely sure who is which. "But you don't actually want to be in control, do you?" she points out, lips against his ear. He turns to her sharply, the confusion legible on his face. He meets her eyes, searching them for her meaning. "Don't look so alarmed," she laughs. The patronization in her every gesture, remark, her very presence seems tactically designed to make him feel awkward and out of sorts.

"One way or another, you all forfeit. Some cave to blackmail, others temptation," she purrs in his ear, as if either of those would work on him!

"I don't cave to temptation-" he huffs in defiance, the idea itself contemptible.

"Says the addict," she says at which he naturally feels annoyed, "It never crosses your mind does it? That you might be susceptible to the same failings as everyone else." He bristles, her Cheshire smile really starting to grate on his nerves, "Even now, you could say you're succumbing to temptation, trying to get that confession you so desperately want."

He feels flustered at being so easily read; it dissipates as heat off his skin. She can feel him burning under his jacket and he feels the sliminess of her grip on him, both literal and otherwise. Revulsion congeals in the pit of his stomach.

"But you I would blackmail rather than bait."

"You don't have anything on me," he retorts.

"Oh?" she asks, intrigued. "Not when all of this is to prevent John from knowing about your unseemly bed habits...?" She traces a circle into the notch of his clavicle and his throat tightens. Why does it feel like no matter what he tries she manages to slip through his fingers and find some new angle twist his arm? He wonders how every which way he ventures she seems to have a trap laid in wait for him, but then remembers leverage is her business. He bites down on his lip and clenches his fist around his gloves, irked.

He tries in vain to compartmentalize the sickening sensation when her ministrations move to his lips. "How do you think John would react to what I did to you?" 

He can hardly meet his own gaze in the mirror at the thought. If he wasn't kicking himself for letting that night happen, he certainly is now. She inhales against him while he tries to suppress the scent of her perfume and all associated memories, frantically piling everything into the delete bin. He flutters his eyes closed at the sudden threat of tears, shaking the sentiment away. He tries in vain to get a grip, her hands, her breath, her voice, everything waging war on his senses.

"It's silly of you to think that being a man changes anything," she says, like he's been terribly foolish, "You and I both know what you really are, behind all the posturing and keeping up appearances."

"And what is that?" he asks, barely able to trust his voice to respond.

  
" _Mine_ ," she says, setting the record straight in case there was any doubt left in his head, for every discrete little microphone listening to hear.

His transport protests when her hands start to take certain liberties under his blazer, but he ignores its objections. He insists to himself that it's fine, that it's alright to lend his transport over to her like this when the gains so far outweigh the cost. A moment's discomfort for a lifetime sentence should be a fair bargain, particularly when the alternative would be her getting away with it all. But this puts even his resolve to the test.

He swallows, glancing toward the door. "Perhaps we ought not to be doing this here," he says evasively, "If someone came in-"

"That wouldn't be good. You've gotten yourself in enough trouble already, don't you think?" she says, seeming to delight in his feeling awkward and ill at ease- he'd venture to say she might even feed off of it. "Making promises you can't keep. Wagering bets you can't win. You've been quite reckless, Holmes."

His hand curls on his gloves, making them crunch with disapproval. She's making fun of him.

"Wait," he says, as her hand starts to stray downward toward his belt. His hand grips hers, temporarily waylaid.

_Now_. He has to ask her now. He needs nothing short of a legal, signed and dated confession to get anyone to believe him. "Does it always start like this?"

She releases an exasperated laugh. "That mind of yours never stops working does it?"

"Tell me how you did it," he insists, locking eyes with her in the mirror.

"You really want to know?" He could scream right now. Yes, he really wants to know. He would have thought that much was obvious.

"If I do this, you'll show me?" he asks, hating how much his voice wavers with indecision. He's vaguely aware of the odd sensation that she has him wrapped around her little finger, but dismisses it as unimportant.

"Careful what you wish for, Mr. Holmes." She laughs at how his face betrays his uncertainty and again he's at a loss as to what she finds so amusing.

"You're so innocent," she says like its something remarkable and Sherlock scowls, not knowing what she means by it.

She takes his chin in hand and turns him to face her, eyes lingering lowly on his mouth. "How about we put that mouth of yours to better use?"

 

 

  
John sends out another text, wondering why Sherlock isn't responding. Normally he's good about texting, but sometimes Sherlock ignores him in favor of ‘greater intellectual pursuits' such as his 'Nobel-winning research on ash' (which John is of the opinion is really something of a byproduct of his addiction and an over-obsessive mind), or simply because the devil is bored and likes to impishly scroll through John's demands for his attention without acknowledging them-- which is never appreciated, particularly when John has legitimate concerns.

John sighs and pockets his mobile, chiding himself for getting worked up over his flatmate's whereabouts. He stares at the carpet as if it were culpable for all the inhumanity and wrongdoing in the world, pondering over the detective and what may have him otherwise occupied. When he realizes that he’s actually sulking, he shakes his head, grabs his blazer and heads out of the conference room. A few public school truants blink and giggle at how underdressed he is given the posh standards of the club and wonder if perhaps he and his knock off rain coat are lost, but he pays no heed.

He glances again at the blank chat screen and prods the sleuth with another text, thinking maybe he ought to call him, but decides against it. He's probably just cross about John's impromptu run-in with Mycroft, which if he hasn't deduced already, he certainly will by the time John steps over the threshold-- and probably insist that John get himself checked for airborne STD's and whatever else Mycroft supposedly carries, John thinks with a sigh.

Just as he's leaving the club to rejoin his uncouth counterpart at the flat however, he hears the iconic chime of Sherlock's Blackberry and stalls midway in the hall. Then he hears his voice coming from the lavatory. Puzzled, John props open the door to the Men's and discovers him by the wash basin across the room.

"Sherlock? What are you..." At first John is surprised to see Sherlock there at all, under the impression he was still at the flat, unawares John had even left. He's entirely not sure how Sherlock had ended up at the Diogenes, a place which he normally avoids with a six mile radius. He starts to consider that perhaps the detective had been following him, but then he sees who he's with and her hands all over him.

His thoughts slow to a grinding halt and his vision goes red.

"Get away from him," the words seethe out of him, sounding more rottweiler than human, rage having the curious effect of making John profoundly articulate.

She has her fingers twisted in his lapel, tracing over the petals of the rose in his chest pocket. She's drawn out the pretty thing and started pestering it, absently torturing the pale pink petals with her fingers. John flexes his jaw at the sight. It's extremely vexing to watch her defile his appearance like that for no decent reason.

"Should we stop?" she asks Sherlock, her voice light as if John’s dangerously brittle sense of restraint right now were occasion for amusement rather than alarm. Her arms encircle him in the casual way a lover might and just the sight of it drives John beside himself. He's about to march over there and tear him out of her arms when Sherlock's eyes fall on John, distant and distracted.

"There's no need," Sherlock says dismissively, impatience ushering him to press forward. He honestly doesn't care; John can watch so long as she tells him what he wants to know.

John, however, in an unforeseen turn of events, has a deeply adverse reaction to this. To say he disapproves is an understatement- he's looking positively murderous, wearing an expression the likes of which Sherlock has never seen on him before.

"I don't think Dr. Watson approves," she jeers, mouth delving into his curls, melding with his ear. He watches her nuzzle against him and feels something twist past breaking point in his chest. _Stop_. She glances his way out of the corner of her eye, her emerald irises laughing at him.

She coaxes Sherlock backward and awkwardly he relents, letting her have her way, letting her crowd him into a secluded corner and trap him against the wall, where she sequesters him all to herself and bites the upper curve of his ear. John watches all of this, too shocked to even fully process it. 

It’s obvious from his reaction that no one has ever done that to him before. He blushes like a virgin would, or rather, like the virgin he obviously is, John is forced to admit. It's unmistakable. The realization burns like acid in John's veins, making everything she's doing that much worse. 

She’s grooming him, destroying John from the inside out with slow, gentle touches, leaving him hollow and squeezed for breath. He doesn't understand what exactly it's doing to him, why he can't move, as if in shock. Then he realizes, she's caught him by the most vulnerable part possible. She’s literally crushing him by the Achilles’ heel, the tender-most spot where it hurts the absolute worst, as he stands by ignored and forced to watch. It’s so far below the belt he wouldn’t have thought such a low blow possible. She's turned torture into a bloody art form.

_Stop it-_ He’s distantly aware of the words coming from his mouth, his nails digging into his palms as he watches the interaction. She’s toying with him, marking him as hers in front of John so as to leave no question of ownership. John shakes is head. No, the idea of it, that he belongs to her, is obscene.

Something in John snaps at the way Sherlock looking at her, listless and resigned to being hers. It’s something willful and rageful and suddenly, irrefutably _there_ that refuses to let her have him.

"Precious," she says, referring to John's telling expression, "do you see the look on his face?" She asks Sherlock, who doesn't move to look at him. Shes not satisfied just torturing John clearly, she has to be cruel about it as well, as if injury alone without the insult weren't enough. John is unable to stand by and contain the all-consuming, blinding madness that seems to have come out of no where and completely taken him over. 

"Stop!" he yells, His own voice sounds strangely as though she'd been actually, physically torturing him, as if she'd been casually snapping the bones of his fingers one by one waiting for him to crack.

Sherlock releases a sigh of frustration as her hands recede from his waist. So close.

"I'll leave you to weather his rage," she says gesturing at John, not that Sherlock fully takes her meaning. Then he sees the way John is looking at him and stops short, locking eyes. 

As she's leaving she takes the rose with her. She plucks the petals out one by one and John has to wonder why it fixates him so much-- as if some sort of glitch in his brain won't let him take his eyes away. Every time she tears a piece off it feels like she's twisting a corkscrew into his side further, until it's just a pile of discarded, torn petals on the floor.

 

 

Sherlock, taken aback by John's arresting expression, doesn't notice at first that she's escaping, reaching for the door.

When he does, he bolts after her. "Wait-"

John takes his arm as he tries to follow her out, which is as inexplicable as it is problematic because in that instant she slips out the doorway, disappearing from view. "Sherlock what the hell are you doing-?"

"Honestly John you pick the most opportune moments. I nearly had her," Sherlock says, meaning to go after her. John's hand tightens on his wrist, barring him from moving, much to Sherlock's exasperation.

"Where exactly do you think you're going?" he asks, with just an edge of dark humor, as if the idea of him walking anywhere of his own volition were a laughable one. The forbidding tenor of the captain's voice intimidates him, but he writes it off all the same.

"What does it look like?" he demands, blowing him off in favor of recapturing the suspect he's set his sights on.

"Sherlock…" John growls warningly, this time his voice unnervingly frightful and much less forgiving.

Sherlock heads for the door but John cages him in between his body and the wall, leaving him no escape. Sherlock looks at the perplexingly temperamental expression on John's face in confused impatience. He doesn't have time for this.

"John, she's getting away-" he hisses in annoyance but John's grip only tightens on his wrists, locking him in against the wall. John looks at him meaningfully. For the life of him, Sherlock can't understand why John is looking at him that way, earnest and pleading.

"Why are you doing this?"

Sherlock looks at him uncomprehendingly. Doesn't he understand he's hindering the whole investigation?

"This is not the time-" Whatever his unfathomable reasons are, John is seriously starting to interfere with his carefully laid plan. Sherlock starts forward but John impels him back against the wall in a stunning display of force, knocking the wind out of him and leaving him breathless. Sherlock gapes at him, thinking John is being completely absurd- Sherlock should be the one demanding explanations, not the other way around.

"What are you doing with her?" John demands, capturing his face in hand and locking eyes with him. The clear ferocity on his features is like a blot from the blue, his jaw set in a firm and unyielding line. No, John doesn’t back down when he gets like this, but normally he has his reasons, which entirely escape Sherlock at the moment. Sherlock's temper flares at how irrational John’s being- the absurdity of the question.

"What are you doing with Mycroft?" Sherlock retorts, his outrage catching John off guard. Sherlock rarely lets his emotions out of the doghouse, but John's really being too much, driving him up the wall with his fair-weather loyalty and his constantly-changing taste in Holmes brothers based on who's most convenient. He seizes the opportunity to fly past John while he's taken aback by the outburst.

By the time Sherlock bursts out of the double doors she'd vanished through, she's nowhere to be found. He scours the lobby area searching for her to no avail. He has completely lost his suspect. Profound. Spectacular, he thinks, raking his hand through his hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this ended without much closure, I will add in the rest tomorrow. Also, forgive my mistakes because I haven't ironed them all out yet :p


	8. Trebuchet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The page break down in word:  
> Page 1 = arguing  
> Page 2 = still arguing  
> Page 3 = any time you two want to stop being drama queens wud be great  
> Page 4= any moment now...  
> 

It'd been a relief to discover she was no longer within their crosshairs. Had they found her, John doesn't know what he might've done.

As they travel back in a taxi, John stares daggers at Sherlock, who is sullenly watching the traffic pass by, his prey out there rejoicing in its freedom while he sulks in the back of a cab.

The tension, which Sherlock is valiantly trying his best to ignore, simply keeps mounting without reprieve. There's an ominous, insatiable hunger radiating from John that's genuinely concerning- the sort you find on the battlefield that supposedly happens on those 'bad days' that no one ever talks about- bloodlust. 

"What?" Sherlock snaps irritably at John's unrelenting glare. The way he looks- you'd think Sherlock has done him the disservice of swiping his jammed toast or something. The vibes he's giving off are so dark and menacing it would make any six foot tall man feel small, not just Sherlock. 

"Oh... Nothing," John says, which inevitably means something, something 'serious'. He's giving Sherlock with the 'test me, I dare you' smile. Sherlock is happy to oblige, having never been a man of caution.

"Well, clearly it's not nothing. I have a hard time believing we lost our suspect all on account of _nothing_ ," he says passive aggressively, crossing his arms.

John grins. So he wants to play it that way. Perfect. He practically _invented_ passive aggression. "Tell me, when, during the course of your little investigation did you deem it necessary to have her hands all over you?"

His absurd obsession with her merely wrapping her hands around him is getting tedious. "Why are you so fixated on that? I don't see what's the problem-"

"That is EXACTLY the problem."

This is ridiculous- John is angry at _him_ , when it's Sherlock who has every right to be angry with John right now. He had _almost_ had her in his power before John had gone and royally botched it up. 

John is currently employing a scare tactic that Sherlock likes to call _intimidation by charisma,_ which works by inducing fear due to the obvious disconnect between one's rage and the fact they are smiling like nothing's wrong. Two can play at that. He takes a page out of John's book and meets John's disturbingly polite smile with one of his own. 

"I confess, you've lost me," Sherlock says apologetically, in a sorry-not-sorry way that's more patronizing than anything. 

"You were about to explain to me what the hell you were thinking," John says, his sense of entitlement seemingly without bounds. Irrespective of that sinister smile, anyone with eyes could tell you he's royally pissed.

Sherlock drops his hand from where it's perched under his chin with a dramatic sweep. He doesn't know what John wants from him.

"I deemed it _necessary_ when I found it conducive to extracting information out of her. Not that you would know, but seduction is a multipurpose tool. It's one- if not the most- effective methods of interrogation."

"You were using yourself as bait."

"Yes!" he says exasperatedly, but this does not seem to appease John. In fact, it does the opposite.

John knows you're not supposed to blame the victim. But Sherlock is not like most victims. He goes out, actively looking to get assaulted. No matter how he turns it around in his mind it makes no bloody sense.

"And you still don't see a problem. With any of this. -Don't zone out, you're zoning out," John snaps, seeing he has since lost Sherlock's attention, who is looking at the windshield like a dog that wants to go outside. Only Sherlock would actually have the gall to do that while they are having this conversation. John's command snaps him back to present and the detective rolls his eyes.

"No, I don't know what you're talking about and alas, I've lost all interest. As far as I'm concerned the only problem is _you_."

John is so far beyond words right now. He can barely hear himself think with his pulse hammering in his head like this.

"I'm not sure what mental impairment inspired you to cut our killer loose, but now she's out there on the streets, still unaccounted for, just as you'd feared."

John's blood throbs in his ears. The way this man, in all his brilliance and ingenuity, can so completely circumvent the point is astounding. The moment the taxi pulls up, Sherlock mounts the kerb, flinging an excess of bank notes at the driver.

John stares at the back of the head rest like he's contemplating ways to assassinate it before he gets up and joins Sherlock on the pavement, the wind picking up and rustling restlessly between them.

"What right did you have to interfere? This is my job- I was on a _case_ ," Sherlock says emphatically, resisting the urge to flail his arms.

"Oh, and God forbid anything get between you and a case."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means between me and a bloody case, you care more about the case. You care more about the bloody work than anything else-" John snaps at him, unnecessarily hand-wavy and over-empatic, as he usually gets when Sherlock has done something heinously wrong. "Because that's what you're really married to, isn't it? Everything else is just an _extramarital_ _affair_ -"

He looks at John as though he's a world-weary substitute teacher and John has asked him the stupidest question on the planet.  "God, don't make me answer that," he says. He rubs his temples tiredly and could just about face palm at the absurd direction the conversation has taken. Was John actually starting to sound like a wife, or was it just him- you know what, scratch that, delete that last train of thought. "Quite frankly it eludes me what you were trying to accomplish with that idiotic stunt you just pulled. Now I have to completely rework the plan in order to make up for your spectacular failings-" 

"You don't have a clue what you're talking about," John has decided, unequivocally. If Sherlock were any good at reading emotions, he would have noticed the glaring, neon danger sign on John's face, but he isn't, so he doesn't.

"No I don't. Feel free to explain it to me John, why you saw fit to sabotage everything-" The sleuth zigzags in front of him in a temperamental fume, whirling about tempestuously. John hates how he does that. He hates everything about him. He hates how in spite of the baleful wind he can still feel him giving off warmth, heat rolling off his body in soft, molten waves. He hates how he has to watch him dart in front of him like he's taunting him, and how hair-pullingly insufferable it is that he still manages to stir John's deepest, darkest wants when he's being this obnoxious.

"You infernal maddening-" he breathes. He's always doing this, constantly slipping out of his hands- so wantable but unhavable, like he's been designed specifically to drive John nuts. Sometimes he truly wants to bite his head off. She has her hooks in him and he refuses to see it, too enamored with his desire to solve the case. He can't see she's using him. 

Why does John have to feel this way about him? He couldn't have picked someone less prone to getting attacked by psychos to worry about?

Deep breaths. Use your words, John.

"You said it yourself- You were dangling yourself in front of her like bait," John's voice cracks, "You were ready to let her have you, and you're asking me why I had to put a stop to it?" he demands at Sherlock, trying to make him understand how unreasonable he's being.

"Why does any of that concern you?" Sherlock says flatly, clearly not affected by a word John is saying. John does a sharp intake at how it all goes in one ear and out the other, unheard. He clenches his jaw, consumed with resentment from all his callous insults, which have reached critical mass.

"So then it's fine, for anyone to shag you, so long as it helps you solve a case?" John says pointedly, blood surging through his veins.

"Obviously," he says, making John's jaw go slack. "Or does that bother you? Do I need your permission, captain?" he asks mockingly, walking away. "Oh, do close your mouth," he grouses, annoyed at the unadulterated look of shock on John's face, "I do things that offend your delicate moral sensitivities. I will never fit into the proper, normal box in your head. Get over it."

John is trembling with rage. "Sherlock!" he yells in a way that commands him to turn back around him and answer to him.

"What is it you want from me?" Sherlock demands, exasperated. He puts a hand on his waist, which means that he's intent on being obstinate or/and vexing at the present moment. "That's the more pertinent question. Lately you only seem concerned with my whereabouts when there's someone else trying to get a leg over on me."

That does it. John grips him by the collar and pulls him downward so that they are face to face, practically vibrating with anger. He has half a mind to lock Sherlock up in an ivory tower somewhere where he will never see the light of day if that's what it takes to stop him from putting himself in danger for stupid reasons.

"Are you daft? Do you think I'm kidding around with you? Is that it?" John says, his emotions getting the better of him, shoving Sherlock against the door. "Are you actually convinced that this is all well and good and perfectly within the lines of business? Are you really that stupid?" John demands, having lost his temper. He bores into Sherlock's quicksilver irises with such unfathomable envy, not caring in the slightest at how lovesick he must look. It's physically impossible for him not to covet every unattainable piece of him and he's helpless to keep the green-eyed monster at bay. "This is why I went to Mycroft. You're completely _deranged_."

The words come out harsher than he'd imagined. Sherlock does a soft intake of breath and stiffens, and John realizes that he's gone a bit too far. But Sherlock keeps his face unaffected as stone, maintaining a facade of indifference. Rather than deign to respond, he doesn't broach the subject at all, but rather bows out of the conversation, aloof and miraculously unaffected as ever.

He retracts without another word and soundlessly turns on his heel. "I can't imagine what you need me for, then," he says simply with a sweep of coat as he makes to the door. He's all grace and smoothness in spite of John's accusations, but John can see the invisible injuries he's made leeching out of him.

An inexplicable, irrational feeling of dread takes root in John's chest. Then his eyes migrate down Sherlock to his gloved hands, which confirm his worst fears.

"Sherlock?" he asks but it warrants no response, just a cavernous, resentful silence in which one might hear their own echo. "You're shaking."

"No I'm not," he clenches down on the trembling hand, "I'm fine."

John feels like a hole has opened up inside him, something taken that can never be replaced. His anger evaporates, feeling powerless at the sight of those symptoms resurfacing yet again. It occurs to him he's having a rare glimpse underneath the facade: a peak at how much he's masking, and how terribly good at it he is. Then seeing the way Sherlock masterfully covers it up, he figures perhaps it's all by design that Sherlock never shows him any weakness or vulnerability of mind.

After all he had done the same thing not 24 hours earlier- repressed every natural emotion and reaction until all that was left was a rancorous demeanor and a few cutting, biting remarks- effectively suppressing the trauma until it was ironed out into a tame, picture-perfect semblance of _normal_...

Sherlock turns away and disappears up the stairs, abandoning John in the threshold where a few gloomy rays of light leak into the dark corridor. John covers his mouth, feeling sick to his stomach, and sinks to his knees, trying to breathe and resist the counterproductive urge to scream.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry we still haven't gotten to the real angsty part yet. i want to get that part in next... although there's a fluffy filler section that goes in around here too which might provide some respite from all the drama. Decisions decisions  
> Do u prefer fluff or angst?  
> Comment below


	9. White Castle

  
After tossing and turning Sherlock admits defeat, acknowledging sleep isn't happening tonight. He presses a hand over his eyes as unbidden images come fresh to his mind, playing vindictive mind tricks across the backs of his eyelids. He gets out of bed and dons his dressing gown, prowling around in search of the kitchen in the mid-morning darkness.

He douses his face at the faucet and lets the ice cold water drench his skin, collecting all the errant thoughts in his head in a stranglehold and silencing them. Then he tampers with the stove until he figures out how to turn it on and makes himself some tea. (Typically John or Mrs. Hudson does this for him.) The kettle has gone from whistling to screaming at the top of its lungs before he blinks and makes to pour himself a cup. He takes a seat at the kitchen table, which houses his microscope, a few discarded experiments and some chemicals that belong in a fume hood, and watches the saccharine concoction glint around the tea spoon, wondering at what point it becomes honey with tea instead of tea with honey.

The lights go on.

" _Jesus christ!_ " John nearly jumps out of his skin. Sherlock makes no motion on his part, staring wordlessly at some fixed point in space. "What are you doing sitting around in the dark?" John asks, once he's fully recovered from the initial scare Sherlock has given him. Sherlock seems to have managed to sit so miraculously still and motionless so as to evade even John's notice, who by default is always wary of his surroundings sometimes even to a paranoid extent, particularly in the dark.

Sherlock takes a sip of his tea, which has long grown cold. "What time is it?"

"5:30."

Sherlock hums.

"Have you been sitting there all night?"

No response.

"Is it because of-" John ventures but Sherlock cuts him off.

"No." It's the _end of conversation_  kind of no, used in the same way one might use punctuation.

The stark lighting somehow manages to enhance his impossibly gaunt frame and hollow out his cheekbones even more, his satin dressing gown giving off an unnatural, cold lustre against his pale skin. John could've easily mistaken the whole set-up for a scene out of _paranormal activity_. His eyes drift down to where Sherlock's white knuckles are clasped around his porcelain mug.

" _Give me that_ ," he says, taking the icy cup away and going to the kitchen to make two fresh new ones.

He sets the mug down next to him on the counter that has become more of a laboratory chemical bench than an eating area. "It's freezing in here," John breathes, "You realise we have a thermostat?" Normally he touches Sherlock's shoulder from behind when he passes him tea, but this time he hesitates. He takes the seat across from him instead. Sherlock doesn't once break the motionless pantomime act.

John studies Sherlock's filed fingernails, the way they curl around his glass and the still, placid surface of his tea. Beneath his robe he's dressed in a vest and slacks, day clothes, with no intention of returning to sleep. Lately John hasn't seen him in anything casual or even sleepwear- his appearance was neat, fastidious, in order, all the time.

John sighs. He couldn't keep indulging in this make-believe fantasy world where supposedly nothing happened, where everything was perfectly fine, content to let everything go unacknowledged and ignored. Leaving Sherlock on his own with this was not helping anyway, if the nighttime tea parties were any indication.

Before he can stop himself from asking, it's out there. "What did she do to you?" So much for treading lightly.

"You know what she does, John. You’ve seen the bodies," Sherlock remarks with every effort to sound put-upon, making a show of how tiresome he finds the question.

"No, what did she do to _you_ ," John demands specifically, refusing to indulge his attempt to detach from the situation and turn everything into cold, impersonal facts. Nothing good would come of Sherlock refusing to admit what had happened to anyone, including himself, dismissing the emotions that were inevitably still there and unresolved.

Sherlock actually looks at him this time, like he's bewildered John is even asking. “Why... do you want to know that?"

John bites down on his lip hard, looking at his tea pensively. “Because I don’t know." he says, finally. "Right now, all I have is my imagination. I have no way of knowing if it was as bad what's in my head or if..." John hesitates, "if it was worse."

Sherlock makes no comment, retreating into thunderous, oppressive silence. The atmosphere feels heavier like it does before a lightening storm, and John finds it impossible to breathe with all the pressure and static.

"Just talk to me will you?" he asks, "Tell me something. Anything." John is looking at him pleadingly but he won't meet his eyes, staring fixedly at the kitchen tile. Desperate, he reaches for Sherlock hand across the table but Sherlock retracts it. It's such a small thing, but it probably would've hurt less if Sherlock punched him straight in the face.

Sherlock is thinking, calculating, pressing his thin fingers against his temple. Then finally, after a solid minute of John sitting on the edge of his seat, he finally responds.

"I can't."

John's hand balls into a fist. "What do you mean you can't? " he starts, shifting onto his feet. Sherlock has stood up from the table and turned away in a refined, graceful motion. There it is again, the steely, impenetrable mask in place of his friend.

"I can't have you thinking I'm fragile," he says mechanically.

"Of course you're not. But you're still human," John reasons, not understanding why he's saying nonsensical things. John glances down to see he's clenching his hand at his side.

Again, with the silence, spanning out indefinitely to no foreseeable end. He hates being left in the dark. It's agonizing to be left to his own devices, knowing nothing, and conjuring up the worst possible scenarios. His nails dig into the wood of the table. " _Why won't you tell-_ "

Having lost his patience, Sherlock whirls around so fast it nearly gives John whiplash. "Because at the end of the day _I'm_ the one who has to look into your eyes and see exactly what you're thinking."

John is momentarily taken aback.

" _I_ have to watch you second guess yourself every time you think about touching me," he says, clearly hating to be forced to say this out loud. As if the sudden pang of guilt for asking Sherlock what he didn't realise was an unfair question weren't enough, Sherlock veers on him with a dark, accusatory look that he is wholly unprepared for.

"Do you think I simply don't notice when you look at me like that, instead of the way you used to? I'm the one has to see that look of shame on your face, knowing it used to be pride." Sherlock's words cut so deeply, John doesn't have to ask which look he's referring to- it's all over his face right now, the guilt, and it only gets worse when Sherlock points it out as if on cue. "Sometimes you _can't_ even look at me."

Before, John had admired him and made no effort to keep his attentions a secret (since Sherlock never missed a thing anyway). Sherlock hadn't minded in the slightest and had in fact liked how John's eyes followed him around. He'd always give him a smirk and return the look for a brief moment whenever he caught John looking at him, as if to say, "I am extraordinary, aren't I?", looking like a cat that got the milk. But John feels like hasn't any right to be looking at him like that, not anymore, not after what he'd let happen. Sherlock is on the mark in pointing out the emotion for what it is, shame, but has horribly mistaken it's direction. John isn't ashamed of him, he's ashamed of himself. Every time he looks at him it only serves to remind him of how miserably he failed to protect him.

" _I_ have to hazard guesses whether you could even stand it if you knew what she did," he says, annoyed, "I'm constantly grasping at straws as to whether you could even love someone who surrendered to the likes of her, who fell to her feet in disgrace, and played right into her hands just as easily as the rest of her victims, like the _ace_ in a royal flush."

"And _I_ will have to watch you leave the moment you realise that I-" he bites his tongue.

The doctor is looking at him with a stunned silence as though he's worried he's inadvertently caused some sort of glitch in his machinery. Sherlock drops his hand from where it's raised in the air, looking irked. His dagger sharp eyes leer at John. The silence rings so loudly in the absence of his voice, vibrating like a string. "For god's sake, don't make me spell it out for you. _I_ _will never live up to that impossible image you have of me that you're so enamored with_ ," he says, explicitly, "I have to watch as you slowly piece together that I am not the undefeatable, invincible man you make me out to be in your blog."

"And it's torture worse than anything she could do," he continues with dark, rueful shadows hanging over him. He steps back under the overhead lights, casting light on his tormented features. His eyes are burning like molten iron, and John has a very weak understanding of why so little of his rage is directed at _her_ and so much of it is directed at _him_. John, somehow, inexplicably, has managed to get under his skin in a way she cannot, in a way he's never seen anyone or anything manage to do. Why he is an exception in harder to suss out.

"You have more power over me in your little finger than she has in her entire arsenal of torture tactics," he says, answering the confusion in his eyes. "She could never destroy me, John, but you _can_."

It's John's turn to be silent and without words, feeling his jaw go slack. He's nothing short of amazed at how Sherlock's sheer strength dwarfs his own, how he can simply press <override> on everything she's done, but also dumbfounded at the idea _he_  has any power over Sherlock, when so rarely does he feel like he has any at all. (How could he, when he can hardly get him to do simple things like eating or sleeping or acting decent or getting him to stop confiscating John's unsuspecting jumpers for the unthinkable, i.e. flammability experiments) But looking at the conviction in his eyes there can be no mistake in what he said.

John leaps up from his chair and catches a very agitated Sherlock in his arms before he can escape to the confines of his room. "Why do you keep saying that? Did she plant that in your head?" he asks, turning Sherlock's face toward him, "That I wouldn't love you anymore?"

That's absurd. John has done far too many idiotic things to not have irrevocably proven that was never going to happen (marrying him, for one... although that was something of a mishap...). "As a- as a friend, I mean," he adds awkwardly, "Obviously."

Sherlock removes himself from his arms, preferring his corner of darkness to letting John see how aggravated he is, which is immature, granted, but even so John sort of understands, (because when where either of them ever really mature?). Well, at least he would understand if John were someone he actually needed to hide his emotions from.

"Why do you have so much faith in her and so little in me?" John wants to know in earnest, "Why don't you trust me?"

Sherlock's eyes won't meet his. Instead, he bites his tongue and brushes past John toward the isolation of his room.

"Sherlock-" John chides him, capturing his arm, his silk dressing gown smooth and slippery beneath his fingers. His interception immediately has the brunet whirling around in a temper.

"Because I'm terrified of losing you," he snaps. The words sort of tumble out, unintended, and he realizes his mistake too late, immediately regretting blurting that out. John blinks at him in surprise for a moment, then a sad, half-hearted smile tugs at the edge of his mouth.

"Me too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... the angst fix got delayed again. One day, my friends, one day. I've got it mostly written out, but it started referencing this, so this had to come first.


	10. Connected Knights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The calm before the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this so you have an update while I work on the climax- which is still in progress but getting there!

John comes down from his room the next day to find the flat vacant, with exception of Sherlock's former best friend, the skull, innocently minding its own business by the hearth. Sherlock's case files and sheet music are scattered about, fluttering in the draft, but the detective himself is conspicuously missing. The unusual absence of any electrical fires, holes in the wall, chemical explosions or any other property damage that would be coming out of his pay cheque this month is a good thing, but suspicious. It's far too quiet for a morning in 221B, and if he didn't know any better, he'd say an anvil was about to drop through the ceiling or poison gas was going to start leeching out of the floor boards. Then he hears the piano mysteriously playing one floor below, which to his knowledge hasn't been played since Mr. Hudson met his demise in Florida.

Curiosity piqued, he follows the music down the stairs, and slowly the faint, disjointed notes he can barely make out become longer and more recognizable phrases. Once he ventures down into the study, he discovers Sherlock is indeed the source of the sound, seated with his back turned at Mr. Hudson's Steinway. Even more intrigued, John leans in the doorway and watches Sherlock play, not voicing his presence so he doesn't stop. He's never seen Sherlock play anything other than his violin. And, well, people.

It had been inexplicable to him up until that point, but in listening to him, it starts to makes sense, in bits and pieces, why she had done what she had done. It wasn't for any of the typical motives a criminal might have to attack the investigator of their own crime. It hadn't been conflict of interest, cover up, collateral, or anything of the sort, that had brought her to his doorstep.

The notes unravel effortlessly from Sherlock's fingertips into a canon that grows more complex as the melodies coalesce. And it becomes painfully obvious, laid out bare for him to witness, as beautiful cadences simply erupt from the keyboard with humbling and masterful dexterity-- His infraction had been much more severe than simply taking the wrong case.

He was too perfect. He was too gifted, too talented- and the list went on and on, didn't it? Too principled, uncompromising, fearless, and heaven forbid, brilliant-- far, far too brilliant for his own good. They were all strikes against him, and they added up.

The way he was was a crime- he never resorted to his baser instincts, he never deigned to violence, he was not crippled by the lesser passions that afflicted most people. He could not be corrupted by money or sex, bribed, bought, or blackmailed.

It hadn't occurred to him the envy that might inspire. She hated him for it. He was everything she was not glaring her in the face. All the bars she could not meet.

And it was infuriating.

"Maybe you just drive women crazy," he thinks aloud, realizing he just interrupted as an after thought. The melody stops.

"You're blaming me?"

It occurs to him that is kind of what he's doing. He shakes his head, amused. "I am. Keep on like that and you're liable to turn all the women into serial rapists that obsess over you."

Sherlock seems unimpressed, like 'all the women' isn't that much of an achievement and doesn't do him full justice. He settles for "That's interesting coming from you." It takes John a minute to play catch up.

"What? I'm not obsessed with you."

"You write a blog about me."

"It's not about you, it's about the cases," John says, frankly surprised he doesn't appreciate the distinction.

"Right," he concedes, returning his attention to the keys with no further comment. The narcissism, honestly. There was no cure for it, was there? 

John is about to press the issue to clear up any outstanding suspicions when Sherlock asks, "Are you just going to stand there?"

Issuing a sigh, John lets it drop and comes as he's beckoned, sitting next to him. "I didn't want to interrupt. The way you play is so beautiful," John says, drawing a line across the black, glossy surface. "I didn't know you knew piano."

"I don't."

"Right, so this is you just... figuring out how?" John asks, so stunned he's almost amused. Leave the man alone with a piano for five minutes and _this_ is what happens.

"Mycroft thinks he can get me to do what he wants by holding the violin hostage," he admits ruefully. Oh my god. Brothers.

"He _took_ your violin?"

"He broke the D string," Sherlock corrects him. He's doing a good job of not showing it, but he's obviously irked.

"Mycroft did?" John asks dubiously, suspecting Mycroft has better things to be doing than villainously cutting violin strings. "Maybe it just broke on it's own." At Sherlock's _yeah-right_ look he says, "Don't they do that sometimes?" Sherlock narrows his eyes.

"I can tell you weren't schooled in the art of sabotage like he was. You have a very simple mind," he says, and John, being the adult here, rolls his eyes like a teenager.

"He said, and I quote, 'Sherlock, if you do not oblige me, I will strip you of your statutory rights, one by one.' _The_ _nerve_." John takes that to mean Sherlock has no idea what his rights are, if he thinks playing the violin is one of them. "My greatest mistake was letting that man become unelected Fuhrer of this country."

"Comparing him to Hitler is a bit much."

"You're right. He's _worse_."

John rubs his face. "What does he want you to do?" he sighs.

"He wants me to roll over and just hand him the case files," he says, annoyed. 

"Would it kill you to just _share_ the case files?"

" _Yes_."

"And why is that?"

"Because they're _my case files_ ," he insists, "They know their master."

"So the case files have a mind of their own now, do they?"

"Don't give me that look," Sherlock says in reprimand, though his eyes are trained on the keys as his fingers dance along them, not on John.

"How do you know what look I'm giving you?" John asks, curious. Sherlock spares him an ill-tempered glance, which he somehow manages to return with a straight face. He does not know what that says, that Sherlock knows him so well he can predict his reactions, but finds it puzzling nonetheless, quirking an eyebrow. Once he's confirmed John is, in fact, giving him _that look_ , Sherlock turns back and carries on with the tune.

"How would you like it if someone asked you to hand over your medical license John? Hm?" John opens his mouth, then closes it. "Not very, yes, I thought as much." he says, then "I'd sooner start cutting off digits than have my cases taken."

"Sherlock, _do not_ -"

"Actually I think that could be quite effective as a negotiation strategy."

"Sherlock, how would you play anything, violin or piano, without your fingers?"

"That is an excellent question John. You should ask him that."

John is starting to consider the possibility that his flatmate is actually a masochist. It would explain a lot of things. "Are you sure this is about the case files, or merely that you hate your brother?" he levels with him.

"The case files, it's always about the case files," he replies.

"Are we even talking about case files, anymore?" John asks, lost.

Sherlock doesn't comment. He decides to switch to something late romantic, more to John's taste than his own, and it draws John in. Sherlock plays it so evocatively, the sound of it dazzling like light dancing on the surface of water. As he continues playing, the melody diverges into a conversation between his left and right hand. It's so familiar even though John has never heard it before, like a forgotten memory.

John's eyes gravitate from his hands back up to him, wondering how he can possibly know to play it like that. If Sherlock's never felt anything close to being lovelorn, how can he capture an emotion he's never felt and isn't feeling? It's the most brutal thing he's ever listened to, like looking into a mirror.

He has to stop him for a second, placing a hand over his. "What is that?" he asks. More like, _What the hell are you doing to me, Sherlock Holmes?_

Sherlock is gazing down at him with eyes that strangely seem to know more than they are letting on, holding back something he cannot say. " _Mariage D'Amour,_ " he informs him.

"Oh," is all John can say, not expecting that, of all things, to be the title. It's almost too much of a coincidence to be incidental. Who, in real life, actually wakes up to the cliche of someone playing things like _mariage d'amour_ on the piano, anyway?

"You don't need a translation for that?" Sherlock smirks, poking fun at him for not being fluent in all languages on the planet.

John cracks an amused smile at the not-so-subtle jab at that event _that shall not be named_ in their not-so-distant past where they got handcuffed together in a more permanent sense. "No, I got it," he assures him.

Sherlock's hand has been left resting on middle C for a fraction of a minute too long, the note hovering in midair, unanswered. There's still something odd in the way Sherlock is looking at him, but Sherlock's eyes slide back to the piano before John can comment, rescuing the hanging note. If it was anyone, anyone but Sherlock, it would've been too weird to write off as normal, but it was Sherlock, and he was... really, really weird.

"I think that that decapitated head in the garden terrace should be sufficiently decayed by now," he muses absent-mindedly, no doubt thinking, with his somewhat incongruous sense of aesthetic, that the idea of decaying human remains suits late-romantic era music perfectly. These sorts of things really don't help when John is trying to explain to normal people that he's not a psychopath.

"Hm. You know, there are some thoughts you could, in theory, keep to yourself," John suggests, so that Sherlock knows in the event he should find himself in the company of people with less... eccentric interests. _I can't believe you still have that thing_ , he mutters under his breath. He can't imagine what the monstrosity looks like now. He's beginning to wish he hadn't taken it out of the fridge.

"Why? Did I ruin the mood?" Sherlock asks playfully, reading the gruesome thoughts on John's face. He's smiling, unapologetic and unrepentant like he's done a good deed.

"Chopin and maggots don't really go well together," John says, cracking a pained smile. It's not exactly a mystery, why Sally thinks he's a total freak honestly. Sherlock's smirk breaks a number of laws, rules, and regulations regarding proper conduct and common decency. Looking at that smile, John thinks that he might actually be the devil.

"I beg to differ."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two songs in this chapter if you are curious:  
> https://youtu.be/rNsgHMklBW0  
> https://youtu.be/FoCG-WNsZio
> 
> Mariage D'Amour is not actually by Chopin, but everyone thinks it is for some reason


	11. Knight to King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N So, many of you said you wanted angst and not fluff... which was the wrong answer, guys, idk why you do this to yourselves. Also, many of you wanted more dominant John Watson, which is also a not a good idea... because then this happens. I have so many regrets right now.

When he'd said he was meeting the woman, John had not approved. At all.

“No.”

“No?” Sherlock asks, perplexed by John’s curious behavior. The doctor is standing in the doorway, clenching his fists and staring fixedly at the ground.

What was the problem this time?

“I don't want you to see her again,” John says, finally managing to wrestle out a sentence.

And how was he supposed to close this case without seeing her, exactly?

Sherlock frowns. John's facultative problems were clearly more severe than he'd originally thought.

"John, she _is_ something of a flight risk," he says distractedly, trying to convey to John the urgency of the situation as he's recovering his mobile phone from where it's charging near the bat display and making preparations to take his leave. People were dying like clockwork, and it didn't make him look good, when people died. "Can we discuss this at some other time?" He says, which is code for, I'm not really interested in what you're saying, to be honest, and am not listening, but by all means continue.

“Sherlock every one of those men who saw her ended up _dead_ -“ he says after him, more to the flailing tail end of his scarf than to him. Sherlock isn't paying him any attention and John is quickly losing his temper. His attire, by the way, was annoying too. He'd decided on a grey suit instead of black, and switched his blue scarf for a red one- what was he, a christmas present? The most grievous transgression was that he'd ditched the coat today. Why had he ditched the coat. It was all very unlike him, soft around the edges, inviting, alluring, _irritating_. "You're not listening to what I'm saying."

"No, but I could deduce it, were it important."

"Alright. What did I say?"

There's an awkward silence. "I'll get back to you on that," Sherlock decides and proceeds to walk around him. But John purposefully moves in front of him, catching him off guard, and he has to back pedal to avoid face-planting into John.

Sherlock bristles, irked. His mind is moving at a much faster pace than the situation will allow- already out the door and down the steps. He's not liking having his plans delayed by John being unusually stubborn, with the arms crossed, and the haughty look he takes to mean the soldier is not going to budge. "She killed all those men, Sherlock, singled handed-"

“Yes, I know, that isn't news to me. I _am_ the one who figured that out,” he tells him, unmoved, "If that is meant to deter me, that’s exactly the wrong way to go about it." John looks vaguely disturbed at how quickly that backfired.

"So, what's the thinking here? You think you're going to casually visit this woman who low-key probably fantasizes about running your body through with some sort of antediluvian pendulum from the Spanish Inquisition or whatever the hell she did to those bodies, and the plan is to what, emerge miraculously unharmed?"

"It's not a 'casual visit'. It's work-" John has to halt him in his tracks then and there, holding out a hand to his chest. Again they come back to his initial reaction to the whole thing. No. No way.

"What?" Sherlock asks, confused as to why he has been detained.

John looks away anxiously, brows knitted together, all his reservations playing on his face. “What if she hurts you again?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes at his nonsensical and irrelevant line of questioning. Why was he being annoying. Could he not reschedule his emotions to some other, more convenient date?

“Don't be absurd,” Sherlock says, attempting to push his way past as he's slipping on his gloves. “She bested me last time, but I’m not letting her get away this time."

He is altogether unconcerned when John looks flummoxed at that, gaping like Sherlock had just confessed he was considering retiring and moving to Australia to study the wallabies. Sherlock brushes past him toward the entryway, more pressing matters to attend to than John's odd, skewed priorities and the insufferable need of his to make all his unwarranted opinions on the matter known.

He opens the door, as he has on any number of occasions, not expecting it to threaten to wipe the nose clean off his handsome face as it slams shut in front of him, the resulting BAM! of wood against wood resounding like a gunshot throughout the flat. He blinks at John's hand, which has appeared over his shoulder and materialized onto the wooded surface.

There was no need for things to get out of hand.

They would discuss this.

Civilly.

Like this:

"She _bested_ you?!" John repeats in a fit of inclement rage, for which he would later express his sympathies to the neighbors, "Okay, full stop. She didn't best you, she _assaulted_ you!" he snaps because there was a bloody difference.

Sherlock flinches at the accusatory and unnecessary assault on his senses, ears ringing. John had a keen talent for diplomatic discussion; it really shown through here.

"It's just transport, John," he deflects, but he can feel John's dissatisfaction practically radiating from him. Sherlock looks to be more interested in the fleur-de-lys patterns on their wallpaper than in meeting John's eyes.

John suddenly grabs him by the shirt and backs him against the wall so that his head clunks against it just hard enough to smart unpleasantly. "Is this just transport too?" John demands. He is looking at him fiercely, expecting an answer.

It's a look Sherlock doesn't have any witty retorts to, for once. Namely because he'd winced at the insult to head- which kind of just subverted his own point. John certainly had a very literal interpretation of the concept of knocking sense into someone...

“Damn it, why? Why are you so obsessed with her?" John says in a temper, unable to understand why Sherlock keeps insisting on solving this case with a blanket disregard for the damage he's doing. In fact he seems to be intent on causing as much damage as is possible, which John thinks is beginning to constitute a pathological pattern, with all the self-destructive tendencies from the drugs to the not eating to the actively searching out of homicidal maniacs.

"You can't.. you can't still like her, can you?" John asks. Sherlock detects a note of angst in his voice, that and something else he can't quite identify. He can make no conclusions as to what John is thinking in saying that, only that he needs to get his head checked if he thinks Sherlock would let _emotions_ compromise his work-

Unless... Sherlock's hand balls into a fist. "Why should that matter to you?" he asks petulantly.

John's jaw clenches as Sherlock proceeds to walk past him in a carefully devised attire which he suspects is designed for the sole purpose of seducing her, at which point, something goes haywire in his brain and John, for lack of a better word, _malfunctions_.

"Alright, if you've really been seduced by that psychopath and you want to be with her, so be it. I'll step aside, I won't get in the way, I'll even give you my blessing- I'll tear up the marriage certificate and be the best man at your wedding in hell. But on one condition, Sherlock," he backs up in step with Sherlock, so that no matter how many steps Sherlock takes forward he can't seem to get between John and the door.

Sherlock looks at him, puzzled, putting a hand on his hip to communicate his impatience. "What condition?"

"Over my dead body," he says, his voice suddenly turning hard, making clear there was no compromise to be made here. Sherlock scowls when he realizes he's having him on and goes for the door.

"Don't be melodramatic-" he says dismissively, but instead of letting Sherlock push him out of the way, John pushes back, pushes him so hard he falls backward against the hardwood.

There's a stillness in the air as the dust settles. When Sherlock meets his eyes, he's giving him a dark look that makes John shiver. He's literally standing between Sherlock and a case, and this is not going to end well.

"You saved my life and now you think that you own it, is that it, Doctor?" Sherlock asks with an amused tone that slivers uncomfortably up John's spine. John feels the gall he had to intervene vanish under that glare of his, burning like frostbite, and he swallows. Something inside his chest twists and his voice turns hard like steel, even though he's shaking with emotions still raw from the first time Sherlock was attacked, a trauma that he inexplicably, seems on intent on repeating.

"Not only have I saved you, I've killed for you. And I'd do worse." He doesn't like the way it sounds like a threat, but he doesn't shy away from it either.

They're at a standstill, neither one breaking eye contact. John feels like he's on the verge of being torn in half, trying to compartmentalize all the conflicting emotions in his head, screaming _do_ and _don't_ at the same time. Not liking having his freedoms taken away like they were with _her_ , Sherlock is showing only the tip of the iceberg of his anger, and even that much is daunting enough to make John feel like he's treading ice. But he objects at the look of censure Sherlock is giving him, like John is completely out of line with no reasonable justification whatsoever.

"You are not hers to tamper with-" John starts to argue with the disapproval that may as well be written in paragraph format on Sherlock's face.

"Then whose am I? Yours?" Sherlock interrupts in what sounds like an accusation, because that is what John seems to be suggesting, with this stunt of his.

John shifts backward at the barb, chastised. Of course he knows he's not _his_ , but it doesn't hurt any less when Sherlock throws the fact at him like a bloody boomerang.

"I don't have time for this," Sherlock dismisses him, rising to his feet. And again, that dangerous cord is struck as he's heading toward the door, that line John cannot let him cross, even if John has to cross several lines himself.

"You can't do this." But Sherlock fails to register it's not an objection, but an ultimatum. He starts to move forward, but John stops him in his tracks, capturing him by the forearm. "I won't let you." Sherlock falls back a step, taken off guard.

He looks at John in incomprehension. "John, unhand me-" he commands, but when he starts forward, it's like walking into an unmoving wall.

"Not another step, Sherlock," John whispers at close range, undaunted by the threat of cutting himself on Sherlock's cheekbones. Sherlock glowers defiantly, full of bluster and refusing to fold. "Don't make me stop you," John warns him in a low voice.

Sherlock looks at him undeferentially. "You can't," he says, watching that knowledge sink in, confirming itself in John's eyes.

He escalates, taking that fateful step forward, and suddenly despite the fact that John appears to be restraining himself, there's an alarming amount of force locking him in place.

"It drives me insane how you gamble with your life!" John yells in a tortured voice. Sherlock scowls at the nonsensical anger in his eyes- after all, it was his life, and not John's, wasn't it?

"What are you-" There's an blatant look of stupor that's truly a rare expression on Sherlock's face, having no idea where the impetus for violence is coming from when he realizes John is grabbing him by the waist and wrestling him away from the door. Then to his dismay, John picks him up and throws him over his shoulder as he's fruitlessly kicking and punching the air, before hurling him back down on the sofa.

"Mmph!" Sherlock says intelligibly, his feathers ruffled. Before he understands what's happening, John has pinned him face down on the sofa, trapping one arm behind his back. His eyes widen at the sensation of leather against his cheek and the muffled sounds of his breath against the cushion.

"John, let me go!" he demands, appalled.

John hesitates for a moment at the sight of Sherlock demanding that he stop, juggling a number of emotions he wasn't entirely prepared for. He's somewhat horrified with himself- this was a lot easier to do in theory, when he was thinking it through in his head, than in practice.

"John!" Sherlock snaps, growing impatient.

"No!" John finally decides, fiercely resolved now despite feeling torn by grief and guilt, not unlike the sort he'd often felt after one of the those 'bad days' on the battlefield that left a bad taste in his mouth. "You've forced my hand, Sherlock," he relays to him, even though this is quite possibly the hardest thing he's had to do, "I can't."

"I've done no such thing-" he starts struggling, fighting him as John's fingers cinch around his wrist. "Unhand me this instant-" he yells like a regular diva.

John is becoming intimately familiar with the meaning of the term _self-loathing_. "I said I can't."

"John-" he says warningly.

"Please stop this," John says, knowing the way his voice sounds and not caring, "You don't have to do this. There are other ways-"

" _There is no other way!_ " Sherlock hammers into him, exasperated they have to go over this again, "I'm the only one who can stop her. She has everyone else under her power-" ....and they topple onto the floor, along with the lamp precariously perched by the arm of the sofa.

"What exactly makes you think _you're_ the exception?" John thunders, looking directly at him, and the expression on Sherlock's face is as though John has just stabbed him in the back.

"So you do think so little of me," he says using a tone John had been on the receiving end of from many a scratched lover. He refuses to believe what John would have him think, that his struggles are futile and his defeat inevitable. "All those things you said were just lies." John's breath hitches.

God, if looks could kill.

"Dammit, Sherlock, that's not-" he starts extending a hand to his face, but Sherlock isn't in the mood for sweet lies and faux consolations. He turns sharply, elbowing John in the ribs before he can even manage a denial. John quickly recovers and recaptures him in his arms, refusing to let go, much to Sherlock's displeasure as he tries to struggle free. His hands grapple for purchase on the ottoman carpet until it is reduced to a rumpled heap beneath his scrawling limbs.

"Sherlock, will you for once just _listen_?!" he yells.

Of course, the answer, for Sherlock, is a unequivocal _no_. John isn't exactly surprised.

"You're going to get yourself killed," he says, at the end of his rope, "I'd sooner kill her myself than see you go through with this."

"That's not good enough! That's not even remotely good enough," he instantly rejects the idea as if the mere suggestion were an insult, making it no secret that he finds John's standard of conduct reprehensible and a disservice to _the work_.

"Then what would you have me do? What _would_ be good enough?" John demands helplessly, starting to grow aghast with his absurdly excessive demands.

"We don't kill criminals, we bring them to justice. If you went out and killed her I'd have you arrested for it."

John grits his teeth. Try as he may, to make peace with Sherlock's pettiness, he's not a saint. And that's what it is- pettiness, not 'a sense of justice'. Please. The only issue here is if John were to kill her, he'd ruin the sport of it, and they couldn't have that, could they?

"Oh really. So you'd give her preferential treatment over me? Because she's killed a lot of people, and I don't see _her_ in jail right now," he taunts him in a voice that makes Sherlock shiver, pulling Sherlock back by the upper arm so that he can talk directly into his ear.

Sherlock hates how he moves like putty in his hands, how John's strength still strains the shoulder socket from the joint even though John is handling him with kid gloves. John can feel his resentment at being manhandled and the added insult to injury of being humiliated, his frame shaking and burning against John with anger.

The reality was that he was at John's disposal. He was injured, probably starving (because of this case he hadn't eaten in... days? weeks?), and in general couldn't even overpower John on a good day. No matter how violently his mind opposed John, his body physically could not, which meant that John was at liberty to do whatever he wanted, and Sherlock was helpless to stop him.

A far cry from relenting however, Sherlock seems to have decided on being vindictive about it, refusing to yield to John's intimidation tactics. "I would treat you no differently than I would her. If you were a criminal, I would see to it that you were locked up in kind, ideally as cellmates," he states. It's all John can do to not accidentally break his arm. Logic over emotion. Always. It was insufferable. If there were any exceptions to that steadfast rule, John wasn't one of them.

If Sherlock was trying to hurt him, well, mission accomplished. John, in turn, makes no effort to pull his punches, seeing that Sherlock seems to know exactly what to say to drive him up the wall and is exploiting it.

"Not before I'd lock you up in the psych ward for being stark raving mad," (which was a temptation at this point, even if it was an abuse of his power) "If you can't manage to get her in jail, what makes you think you could handle _me_?" Sherlock is trembling against him with rage, and barely-contained humiliation. "This isn't about justice, or the law. It's about you getting your way- this is insanity and you know it."

"Do it then, instead of talking about it. If you think I am so outmatched, so in over my head, so deranged and a danger to myself to extent that my sanity is in question, as you put it," he says, looking over his shoulder at John with hooded eyelids in an undeniably manipulative way that tugs at his heartstrings, making John suspect Sherlock is very much aware of what he's doing to him, and that that perfectly-calibrated look was intentionally designed to guilt-trip him to death, "then straight-jacket me, Doctor, if I am in such desperate need of correction." John curses, looking at Sherlock like he's the arrow in his achilles heel, "But if you can't, don't think, even for a second, that I am going to simply _let_ her walk away without a single murder conviction."

"That is not what I'm saying!" John says, aggravated, twisting him around. "Sherlock, you know I don't think that. You are the most brilliant, mad, admirable man-"

" _Stop it,_ John-" He interrupts, indignant, and they start talking over each other, John trying to get him to "listen, I'm trying to tell you that I-" and Sherlock cutting him off, raving something along the lines of "Enough. I've heard enough lies. Don't insult my intelligence by expecting me to believe them. I don't know why you even bother-" "I am not lying to you, you idiot-" "Oh, just give it up, will you?"  
"-- _No_!" John says fiercely, overriding him, "I adore you more than anything-" " _John_ -" "-and you're walking straight into certain death like a moth to a flame, saying you'll resent me for the rest of your life if I don't let you. You haven't any idea how unfair that is-" (Sherlock is rolling his eyes) "You won't talk to me, you won't even hear me, you're not even letting me keep you from getting yourself killed with all your uncompromising, unilateral decisions. You think I'm in the wrong and that I've no right to be doing this, when you've pushed me against a wall. What the hell else am I supposed to do?" "Not act so theatrical maybe-?" "This is not an _**act**_ -"

"If you adored me," Sherlock says mockingly (since there was no shortage of maturity here), "You wouldn't be _defending my rapist._ " John looks extraordinarily vexed, whispering his name as if he'd said something scandalous and morally reprehensible. "You wouldn't be so concerned with the nature of my intentions toward her and you certainly wouldn't be _enabling_ her."

" _Enable_ -?! " Whose side did Sherlock think he was on?

"It's not very complicated, John. In restraining _me_ , you're aiding and abetting _her_ \- or don't you get that?" John's eyebrows contort at Sherlock, who is making less and less sense as he goes on, "You're _complicit_ , in bed with her. You might as well be sleeping with her." As the accusations get wilder, John's eyes flit to the slipper where he usually stashes his narcotics, starting to wonder if all this is really because he's been dabbling again, "Maybe you are, for all I know."

"That's not what- wait, _what_?" _Him_? Sleep with _her_? What was he _on_? Certainly nothing legal.

"Did she turn you against me? Did she manipulate you into doing this?" he asks, and John might actually laugh if he wasn't so out-of-the-ballpark furious right now, "I don't have to guess how, since you're generally quite desperate to sleep with any member of the opposite sex that's willing."

John has half a mind to smack him across the face. "You don't think that."

But Sherlock is so convinced John is feeding him lies Sherlock can't bear the sight of him. "It wouldn't surprise me," he answers the forbidding look on John's face that's a truckload of octagonal stop signs warning him not to continue, "It would certainly explain a lot."

John is so beside himself, he has no words. "You're lying. Take it back, Sherlock," he whispers. Sherlock irreverently tries to push him off, at which point John loses all restraint, slamming Sherlock's back against the floor. Sherlock chuckles.

"You want to hit me," he baits him in that sultry baritone that makes John so confused because the words and the voice don't match, one alluring and the other barbaric, cruel and beautiful like the thorns on a rose, "So much for all those sappy convictions about how much you supposedly adore me."

"Stop it, just stop it, Sherlock. Please," he says, his voice strained and high-pitched. And they're at it again. Part of John knows it's no use trying to stop him. Sherlock would never give up on this because it's not in his nature, in the same way it's not in John's nature to stop protecting him. It was like one of those pesky equations with no solutions. He shakes his head, water clouding his vision. "You don't know how much I hate this."

Sherlock issues a surreal, deeply unsettling laugh, and John feels everything veer up-side-down at the sound of it. "Is this the part where you tell me 'this is going to hurt me more than you'?" he says. John is disturbed by how much he relates to the sentiment.

"I'd never hurt you," John insists like he's trying to convince himself more than anyone else, but saying that only makes the hypocrisy of his words all the more glaring. Sherlock doesn't have to point out that he's hurting him plenty, even as he demands to be let go.

The guilt quietly chipping away at his sanity, John eventually gives up entirely and binds him in a hug, even as he keeps thrashing, trying to escape. He keeps pleading with him to stop, which Sherlock mindlessly ignores, fingers practically prying the floorboards from the living room floor. John buries his face in his shirt, wishing he could explain why he has to do this without having it fall on deaf ears.

"Sherlock- please," he begs, as Sherlock tries to ward off his attempts to hold him down. Sherlock manages to break free and John really wishes he hadn't, because now John has to lunge after him like the crazy, abusive, axe-murderer husband that he's desperately trying to mentally distance himself from right now.

He knocks Sherlock down as he tries to escape and captures his wrists at his sides, holding him down against the hardwood floor. "Sherlock..." he says. Looking down at his flatmate, the horrible reality of what he's doing comes into vivid focus. If Sherlock were to happen upon the signs of struggle as part a case- the state of the furniture in disarray, the scuffs on the floor, or the ripples in the carpet- he would probably deduce some sort of brutal domestic violence scene had occurred. "This isn't what it seems like. This isn't what I.."

_Stop. Stop doing that. Stop looking at me like that._ John grits his teeth under the purgatorial look Sherlock's giving him. What those eyes are accusing him of is impossible to swallow.

"I don't have a _choice_ , Sherlock," he whispers in frustration, "You're making me do this."

"Lies. Excuses. Rationalizations to justify what you know you're doing is wrong," Sherlock says mercilessly, cutting everything into black and white with a bloody excato-knife the way he does. "Absolve yourself of any wrong doing- blame everyone else- it's the sort of twisted logic any perp would use, John. It's all so stereotypical it's yawn worthy-"

"Oh, I'm sorry, am I boring you?" John asks, peeved. God forbid, Sherlock should ever find himself bored.

"Quite frankly, yes-" Sherlock says, actually glad he asked.

John might just pull his own face off. "It was a _rhetorical question,_ Sherlock!" he says. He'd shake him by the shoulders if he thought it would help any. "God, you should hear yourself. You've got everything completely backwards. You're the one that's twisting everything-" he'd really love to twist him in his hands right now.

"Your decisions are your own, John. I fail to see how I can be held responsible for them. After all, this was your brilliant idea, was it not? Solving everything with your fists is your specialty not mine and _you_ are the one that's attacking _me_ , if I'm not mistaken."

"Enough!" John is getting royally pissed with his manic need logicify everything. "What you're doing to yourself is far worse than what I would ever do to you. You might not think of yourself this way Sherlock, but you are flesh and blood, and when your body finally stops so will _you_."

"So you've decided to have your way with it," he says, in summary, with all the morally reprehensible implications.

John is speechless, mouth open but no words coming to his defense, those eyes, the very same ones that would so often look at him like he's the only person on the planet, now looking at him like he wouldn't think twice about handing him a verdict for capital punishment.

"Tell me John, if your motives are so pure, then how is it you can't even face what you're doing?" he berates him, annoyed by John's lack of answer.

"Shut up!" he yells at him. Under the overhead lights he cuts a dark and indignant silhouette with shoulders quaking in rage, commanding a don't-push-me-or-I-swear-I'll-smack-you voice that rings from the walls. He's not liking having Sherlock throwing a searchlight on the guilt he's been trying so hard to ignore. But when Sherlock's jaw wires shut at the ultimatum and all he can do is glare his dissent, John realizes the silent accusations are so much worse than the verbal ones.

What the hell was he doing? The threat of violence achieved nothing other than to confirm that he is all the things he's accused of being.

He realizes that Sherlock is trembling, wary of John's every movement. It feels like the stab of a pinprick when Sherlock flinches from his touch as he reaches for him. Watching the nervous tension at his every move, the broken trust ruinously casting shadows of doubt and fear and betrayal across his face- it's John's undoing, it's all John can do not to lose all sense of reason then and there.

  
He releases Sherlock's collar which he hadn't realized he had grabbed, and shakes his head, defeated. "Damn it, Sherlock. You don't understand. I-" John looks down at him, wanting to call him so many things, _you idiot, you ditz, you dense, clueless numbskull,_ or some permutation of invectives thereof. But he doesn't actually know how to finish that sentence. What was he supposed to say? That this was because he loved him? That that was something that Sherlock had no chance of reasoning with, talking him out of, or arguing with-- that it wasn't a logical or rational thing?

Yeah, that would go over well. He might as well be speaking an language lost to history with no Rosetta stone. He wonders whether it would even be enough to stop him anyway. Talk about the bloody definition of wishful thinking, Watson.

Before John realises what he's doing, he's leapt forward to squeeze him in a hug, so sudden and desperate and senseless that he startles Sherlock. Mistaking the nonsensical outburst of affection for violence, Sherlock panics and struggles against him in alarm. Despite his spurned advances, John tightens his arms around him, trying to get him to understand he doesn't want to hurt him (which, though a noble endeavor paved with good intentions, is kind of backfiring).

Sherlock's breathing is quite erratic against his ear, his heart hammering in his chest, the sweater he's wearing feels delectably plush and teddy bearish as it strains and threatens to tear, which John hadn't really been a fan of until now. John holds him so forcefully, he's equally afraid he might break him as he is of him escaping. He thinks maybe he's gone mad.

Panting from exhaustion, his bandages torn and lying around here and there, eventually Sherlock stops trying twist his way out of John's hold, which is an impossible feat anyway. John can feel him shudder at the sensation of John's nose against his hair, frightened stiff. John's hand slides down Sherlock's sleeve in a fond, gentle caress to reassure him, but the gesture elicits a jolt instead, just a touch of the fingers on fabric enough to make him nearly jump out of his own skin, apparently. Did John really terrify him so much?

He takes Sherlock's head gingerly in his hands. At first he just wants him not to be scared to death as he is, and then he's lost track of what he's doing in the mess of emotions. Whether he's holding him or kissing him or the breaking the rules on what-men-are-supposed-to-do-if-they-are-NOT-GAY he has no idea. Probably all of the above.

When he leans back on his heels to meet Sherlock's eyes, they are looking back at his face, completely lost and confused. And then, and then, the cogs begin to turn, and it all clicks in his head.

"But I do. I understand perfectly," he feels Sherlock's low voice rumble in his chest, sounding almost amused to John's dismay. There's something worrisome in his voice that John doesn't even recognize at first. He must've misheard- it's couldn't be hatred?

"You're just like her," he says. John can only stare in disbelief, like Sherlock's mistaken his heart for a tomato (close enough, right?) and taken a knife to it to dice it on the cutting board.

"No-" John says prohibitively, refusing to let him think that. His actual feelings have been so completely distorted, twisted, misinterpreted beyond recognition.

"You want me in the same way."

John's hand tightens on his sleeve. "It's not like that at all-" he says vexedly, even a bit angry.

"I should have known," he sighs tiredly, like this whole ordeal was nothing more than a nuisance, an exasperation, a colossal waste of time. "I should have known. It's so obvious now. I was a fool to think of you as anything otherwise."

"Sherlock, that is not what this is!"

Not hearing him or not wanting to, Sherlock twists out of his hold, only to flop back down face first once John (somewhat vindictively) traps him between his own arm and the floor. Sherlock lets out a gasp of surprise at the pain of his still-fresh injuries. John's breath hitches at the sight of Sherlock going alarmingly pale with shock, realizing he's hurt him much more than intended.

John naturally stops at the sight of pain, but Sherlock takes advantage of his weakness and rallies, seeming intent on repeating this wash-rinse-repeat cycle over and over until he doesn't have any strength left. "What am I really to you, John?" he asks, something bestial and ravenous in his voice, "Have you been lying to me, about everything?" John has never seen him like this- it's nonsense. He's going to make John keep doing this until he's completely destroyed, reduced to a broken, damaged tangle of limbs on the floor, and John, with all his nerves of steel, doesn't have the grit for it.

"Sherlock, you have to stop this. You're injured-" John tries to reason with him, but Sherlock is not listening.

"I'd thought of you as a friend!" he rants against the hardwood, sounding so betrayed John falters. It's as if Sherlock had physically injected his hand with a stapler gun. When Sherlock falls forward with an unpleasant thud he feels as if something other than his own grip just broke. His heart lying in shambles like the glass littered all over the carpet, he can't even manage a 'Sherlock, you're being crazy' or a 'news flash, I'm not a rapist and if I was I think you'd know about it'. He reaches a hand out to comfort him, but Sherlock cringes from him. John's nails claw into the flesh of his palm, wanting to touch him so badly.

"Sherlock-" he approaches his frenzied form with caution, seeing how upset he's made him, "Sherlock, none of that has changed-" but Sherlock violently rebuffs his touch and John's attempts to console him quickly devolve into another senseless wrestling match.

"Damn it, Sherlock, I love you," he finally says without thinking. That seems to pour gasoline on the fire.

"What do you take me for, an imbecile?" he asks, not giving John the chance to confirm it, "Oh please, John save it. You just want to have me to yourself, for your own perverse purposes-" he's upset, cutting himself off and looking away.

"Sherlock-!" John remonstrates him, pinning him to the ground and trying to get him to come to his senses. His chest is heaving, his dark hair mussed and his fair skin burnt from the carpet's abrasion, as if someone struck a match against it. Then he becomes all smoothness and composure, the change is disconcerting.

"Well then, do with me what you want. I can't stop you," he says matter-of-factly, "My vainglorious intellect, with all of its powers, won't help me here."

John can literally feel all sense of reason leave him. Props to Sherlock, because after many, many valiant but unsuccessful attempts, he'd finally done it. He'd finally _broke_ John and John had snapped- John who prided himself on being the sane one, the normal one.

"Sherlock..." he says, repeating his name like a broken record. Sherlock looks away, as if he might cry, and though John is intimately familiar with the fact that when Sherlock cries he is almost certainly manipulating someone, he falls so hard for it he can taste dirt.

"After all this time, after everything we've been through together, is that really what you think I want? How can a someone as brilliant as you be so daft?"

When John tries to hold him, Sherlock actually bites him, and when John touches his fingers to his mouth it comes away with blood. He blinks at it, and then Sherlock in dismay, his mouth curving upward at the absurdity of the situation.

Though it's been an accident, Sherlock seizes the opportunity to make his escape, but in scrambling to his feet he trips backward on sloughs of carpet.

John sighs and stands from where he's knelt on the chaotic carpet, approaching to check his injuries, but in the heat of the moment, Sherlock grabs the mail opener next to the upended coffee table and John stills.

For a second, Sherlock is just as surprised as John is. He doesn't even have a fully formed idea of what he's doing with it.

John tilts his head at his wonky behavior. It's obviously not proper to be amused by this, and much less to let the amusement show on his face. Sherlock had PTSD, which he knew as a doctor and someone who suffered from it himself, was no laughing matter.

Still, a smile cracks on his face at the thought he might... what exactly? "What are you going to do with that?" he asks, intrigued. 

"Would you hurt me, Sherlock?" He'd walked closer toward him, ignoring the coiled tension coursing through his counterpart.  "Would you really kill me, just to be with her?" 

"Because you're going to have to."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you all have no idea what's happening, but please take a moment to comment or leave kudos for your writer and we will get back to this cliffhanger soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Join the Sherlock amino, which is a community on the Amino app of Sherlock fans 45k+ strong. I'm part of the magazine committee there (yes we have monthly magazines about BBC Sherlock!!), which you should definitely check out. Look me up under my username "Sherlock (Lue4028)" or check out my tumblr   
> "Lue4028@tumblr.com"


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